UT-Knoxville is the lead institution for a $25 million cooperative agreement awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation to support research that underlies its nuclear security and nonproliferation missions.
Chancellor Donde Plowman posted the announcement on social media July 1, 2024.
The Enabling Capabilities in Technology Consortium will receive approximately $5 million a year for five years. Scheduled to begin in March 2025, it includes funding for 35 graduate and 26 undergraduate researchers each year with the potential to support additional students.
Jason Hayward, UCOR Fellow and professor of nuclear engineering at UT, is director of the consortium’s executive team. He said: “Our efforts will help produce the new knowledge and the diverse talented workforce necessary to enable the U.S. and its allies to safely and securely triple nuclear power output throughout the world by 2050 and respond to emerging threats in space.”
Consortium Partners
The consortium includes 15 universities and eight national laboratories. Other schools in the consortium are the Air Force Institute of Technology; Clemson University; the Colorado School of Mines; Louisiana State University; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; North Carolina State University; Oregon State University; Texas A&M University; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of Hawai’i; the University of Oklahoma; the University of Texas at San Antonio; the University of Utah; and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Eight national laboratories are involved: Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and Savannah River National Laboratory.