What to read after U.S. Nuclear Engineering Education?

This study examines the status of and outlook for nuclear engineering (NE) in the United States. The study resulted from a concern about the downward trends in student enrollments in NE, in both graduate and undergraduate programs. Concerns have also been expressed about the declining number of U.S. university NE departments and programs, the aging of their facilities, and appropriateness of their curricula and research funding for industry and government needs, the availability of scholarships and research funding, and the increasing ratio of foreign to U.S. graduate students. A committee representing universities, laboratories, government agencies, and corporations studied the current status of NE education in the United States, estimated the supply and demand for undergraduate and graduate nuclear engineers in the United States over the near- to mid-term, addressed the spectrum of material that the nuclear engineering curriculum should cover and how it should relate to allied disciplines, and recommended appropriate actions to ensure that the nation's needs for competent nuclear engineers are satisfied over the near- and mid-term. Since the responsibility for a viable NE education system is shared by the Federal Government, private industry, and the academic community, recommendations were split into these sectors: (1) Federal Government should increase funding for traineeship and fellowship programs, provide additional research funds to support reactors, enhance programs to attract women and minorities into the field, assess supporting the access, for educational purposes, of NE departments to research reactors, etc.; (2) Industry such as electric utilities should increase their participation and support of training programs and continue working with the American Nuclear Society to support its advocacy of NE education; (3) Universities should continue to have broad based NE curricula, have more research programs with more research in reactor-oriented areas, develop and support research related to power reactor, nuclear waste management, and environmental remediation, and seek a means for partial or phased retirement of older faculty so junior faculty may be added. (30 references) (KR)