DOE unit awards $25 million grant to universities for nuclear research

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), under the Department of Energy (DOE), awarded a $25 million grant to a research consortium consisting of eight universities for research and development in nuclear science and security.

“NNSA pursues its mission in nuclear security through the application of world-class capabilities and meets the evolving challenges of tomorrow through our commitment to innovation and research in the fundamental sciences needed to adapt to this dynamic, yet enduring, nonproliferation and nuclear security mission,” Anne Harrington, NNSA deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation, said. “I am confident that more basic research efforts in academia will complement the applied efforts of the national laboratories and industry in supporting the critically important national security goals of our country.”

Research will focus on nuclear and particle physics, nuclear engineering, radiation detection and instrumentation, and radiochemistry related to forensics.

The grant will be distributed over a five-year period, with increments of $5 million each year. The research group consists of consortium leader University of California-Berkeley, Michigan State University, University of California (UC) at Irvine, University of California-Davis, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Texas A&M University, University of Tennessee at Knoxville and George Washington University. The universities also will be working with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.