INL National University Consortium – Annual Report 27 INL Employee and MIT Joint Appointee Served as Executive Director of High-Profile MIT Report In 2003, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led by Ernest Moniz, who would later become U.S. Energy secretary under President Obama, released “The Future of Nuclear Power.” It was the first of MIT’s renowned “Future of” studies aimed at addressing complex issues involving energy and the environment. Future MIT studies addressed geothermal energy (2006), coal (2007), an update on nuclear power (2009), natural gas (2011), the nuclear fuel cycle (2011), the electric grid (2011) and solar energy (2015). For the ninth study, David Petti, the director of Nuclear Fuels and Materials division at INL as well as an alumnus of MIT, was called on to be the study’s executive director. “I can’t overstate the importance of the MIT reports in advancing the dialogue on nuclear energy,” said INL Director Mark Peters, who served as one of seven reviewers of the study. “INL is proud to have been a part of the process that resulted in this study, and we’re also very proud of Dave Petti’s work and distinguished career.” The 248-page study concluded that, in order for policy makers to maximize the benefits of nuclear energy they need to establish: • Decarbonization policies that create a level playing field that allows all low-carbon generation technologies to compete on their merits. • Reactor sites where companies can deploy prototype reactors for testing and operation oriented to regulatory licensing • Funding programs around prototype testing and commercial deployment of advanced reactor designs Research Group Presents on the Benefits of International Collaboration An international research group presented “A NEUP Example of US-UK Collaboration: An Experimental and Analytical Investigation into Critical Heat Flux Implications for Accident Tolerant Fuel Concepts” at the American Nuclear Society Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C. Led by the University of New Mexico, the research team maximized each members strengths to develop a combined experiment and modeling approach to determine potential critical heat flux changes in accident tolerant fuel cladding candidates. The research group was comprised of researchers from Oregon State University, Idaho National Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, Imperial College (London), AREVA and General Electric. Oregon State and INL Distinguished Postdoc Develop Model to Measure Transient Reactor Pulses Published in the Annals of Nuclear Energy, authors Wade Marcum, an associate professor from Oregon State University, and Thomas Holschuh, a Deslonde de Boisblanc Distinguished Postdoctoral Research Associate, detailed modifications to the Fuchs-Nordheim model. The modifications allow researchers to now predict reactor power during a transient, e.g., a change in the reactor coolant system temperature, pressure or both. Publications and Proceedings