Medina, H. E., & Polk, J. T. (2020, June), Repurposing a Nuclear Integrated System Test Facility for Engineering Education  Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35146

\bibitem{asee_peer_35146}
  Medina, H. E., \& Polk, J. T. (2020, June), \emph{Repurposing a Nuclear Integrated System Test Facility for Engineering Education}
  Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line .
  10.18260/1-2--35146

Hector E. Medina and Jonathan Tristan Polk.  "Repurposing a Nuclear Integrated System Test Facility for Engineering Education".  2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line , 2020, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2020.  https://peer.asee.org/35146 Internet.  19 Apr, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_35146}
  Hector E. Medina and Jonathan Tristan Polk.
  "Repurposing a Nuclear Integrated System Test Facility for Engineering Education".
  \emph{2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line , 2020, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2020.
  https://peer.asee.org/35146 Internet.  19 Apr, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_35146
author = "Hector E. Medina and Jonathan Tristan Polk"
title = "Repurposing a Nuclear Integrated System Test Facility for Engineering Education"
booktitle = "2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access"
year = "2020"
month = "June"
address = "Virtual On line "
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/35146}
number = {10.18260/1-2--35146}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Nuclear energy (NE) represents more than 60% of the clean energy in the United States. Due to the great advantage that NE offers, it is important that more education that includes practical experience be made available to both undergraduate as well as graduate students. Furthermore, with the arrival of Small Modular Reactors (SMR) as a commercially available product, it is imperative that educational programs provide hands-on experience that include operations of those complex systems. However, the insurmountable costs and lengthy regulating processes render the aforementioned type of projects unfeasible. 
In this paper, we discuss the potential to engineering education of re-purposing of a $40M Integrated System Test (IST) facility with a 1.7 MWt capacity, which was originally developed for the m-Power SMR design by BWXT Technologies, Inc. (a.k.a. BWXT), and it is currently located at Liberty University's Center for Engineering Research and Education, in Forest, Virginia. The aforementioned thermal-hydraulic loop could be used for complementing teaching on areas such as: controls, thermal-hydraulics, modularity in energy systems, cyber-physical systems, and many others. It will be used to contribute to existing courses such as Fluid Dynamics, Thermal-Fluids Design Lab, Mechatronics, Machine Learning, as well as nuclear engineering courses that will be developed.
Furthermore, the paper provides a rationale for the need to integrate the use of the IST as part of the experiential-learning approach of our engineering curriculum. The rationale is threefold: (1) the nature of our hands-on teaching philosophy, (2) the advent and relevance of SMRs and need of trained workforce, and (3) the ongoing need of engineering programs to be submerged in active interactions with local industry as well as provide our engineering students with real-world experience.


AU  - Hector E. Medina
AU  - Jonathan Tristan Polk
CY  - Virtual On line 
DA  - 2020/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Repurposing a Nuclear Integrated System Test Facility for Engineering Education
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/35146
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--35146
ER  -