Nuclear engineering

Berkeley to lead $25M nuclear security research consortium

02/09/16 — A new $25 million grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration puts UC Berkeley at the head of a multi-institution consortium focused on research that supports nuclear science, national security and nuclear nonproliferation.

Berkeley-led consortium receives grant to research nuclear energy, security

02/01/16 Daily Californian — The multi-university Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, led by UC Berkeley and headed by nuclear engineering professor Jasmina Vujic, has received another $25 million federal grant to research nuclear energy and security, aimed at attracting young scholars to the field.

Discarded circuit boards ready for processing

Filtering the e-waste stream

11/16/15 — Alumnus Glen Langstaff (B.S'77 ME/NE) wants to use new technology to make disposing of old technology cheaper and more efficient. Here's how:

Nuclear engineering students with wreck-hunting submersible

Radioactive wrecks?

11/01/15 — Sixty-four years after the U.S.S Independence was sent to the bottom of the Pacific, the wreckage was found and tested for radiation contamination by a Berkeley team.

Copter to fly over campus in the name of science

09/01/15 — Kai Vetter, nuclear engineering professor and RadWatch director, is one of the scientists behind helicopter flyovers of campus this week as researchers seek to measure naturally occurring radiation in the environment.

Frame from time-lapse video showing DNA repair activity in a cell

Time-lapse analysis offers new look at how cells repair DNA damage

09/01/15 Berkeley Lab — Time-lapse imaging can make lengthy, complicated processes easier to grasp. Now Berkeley Lab scientists led by Sylvain Costes (Ph.D'99 NE) are using a similar approach to study how cells repair DNA damage.

Radiation safety for sunken-ship archaeology

07/08/15 Berkeley Lab — Kai Vetter, professor of nuclear engineering and Berkeley Lab scientist, is helping researchers determine the radiation risk of exploring an underwater aircraft carrier scuttled off the Farallon Islands after World War II.

Lost and found

05/01/15 — A piece of early atomic history was found in a storage closet.

X-ray telescope image of the Bullet Cluster, providing evidence for dark matter

Heising-Simons Foundation supports Berkeley search for dark matter axions

03/18/15 — Dark-matter axion research at four U.S. institutions, led by nuclear engineering professor Karl van Bibber, is one of two new grants to UC Berkeley scientists from the Heising-Simons Foundation.

Identifying Seaborg’s lost plutonium

01/08/15 Physics Central — A tiny radioactive fleck - rediscovered in a bucket on its way to a disposal site - may well be the first sample of plutonium big enough to be seen by the naked eye, produced in 1942 by the element's discoverer, Glenn Seaborg.

Nuclear Engineering’s Hosemann to receive two TMS awards

10/30/14 — Peter Hosemann, associate professor of nuclear engineering, will be presented with a pair of awards at the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) meeting in March, recognizing both his accomplishments to date and his exceptional promise for the future.

Nuclear Engineering’s Slaybaugh to receive ANS Young Members Excellence Award

10/24/14 — Rachel Slaybaugh, assistant professor of nuclear engineering, will be awarded the American Nuclear Society's 2014 Young Members Excellence Award for her exemplary leadership in and contributions to the field of nuclear engineering.

RadWatch project brings near real-time radiation data to the public

06/19/14 — A team of Berkeley nuclear engineering scientists has launched a project called RadWatch to provide the public online access to a wealth of information - including near real-time readings - on environmental radiation levels. The researchers say the effort is meant to demystify radiation, an often misunderstood subject.

EPA hits nuclear power with kryptonite

06/13/14 Forbes — A commentary questioning whether the EPA's new proposed emissions rule for nuclear power plants is politically motivated quotes a forum post by nuclear engineering professor Per Peterson, who wrote that "There exists no plausible public health or environmental reason to regulate [Krypton-85] emissions, since they do not and can never have any significant public health or environmental impact."

No Fukushima radiation found in West Coast kelp

05/07/14 Berkeley Lab — Scientists working together on Kelp Watch 2014, including nuclear engineering professor Kai Vetter, announced Wednesday that the West Coast shoreline shows no signs of ocean-borne radiation from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, following their analysis of the first collection of kelp samples along the western U.S. coastline.

Measuring your DNA health

04/04/14 — Sometime soon, Sylvain Costes (Ph.D'99 NE) hopes that annual medical checkups will include a simple blood test to determine levels of DNA damage. The list of things assaultive to the body's basic building blocks is long - radiation, ultraviolet light and toxins, to name a few - and errors occur even during normal cell division. The body continually repairs this damaged DNA, but sometimes, the routine repair process can fail. DNA damage and genetic mutations can lead to serious health problems like cancer, immunological disorders, neurological disorders and premature aging.

Fukushima radiation near Half Moon Bay? Not so fast…

03/24/14 Contra Costa Times — Japanese radioisotopes aren't lurking in the sand at Miramar Beach, the California Department of Public Health said in a final report debunking suggestions that the beach contained radioactive material from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. "Nuclear radiation is something you can't smell, see and feel; it tends to scare people" said UC Berkeley nuclear engineering professor Kai Vetter, leader of the school's Rad Watch project, which has tested West Coast air, rain, milk and fish without finding any evidence that Fukushima-related contamination poses a health threat.

Ad for reddit Ask Me Anything with Berkeley nuclear engineers

AMA brings nuclear engineers to Reddit

03/14/14 Daily Clog Science — In an Ask Me Anything session this week on Reddit, six professors from UC Berkeley's department of nuclear engineering answered questions ranging from concerns about thorium reactor design to environmental monitoring in Fukushima.

Researchers launch ‘Kelp Watch’ to determine extent of Fukushima contamination

01/14/14 Berkeley Lab — California researchers, including nuclear engineering's Kai Vetter, have launched “Kelp Watch 2014,” a scientific campaign to determine the extent of radioactive contamination of the state's kelp forest from Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant following the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami.

On nuclear waste bill, senators look to public for help

07/01/13 New York Times — A pending Senate bill would solicit input from the public about where to bury the nation's nuclear waste. Per F. Peterson, professor of nuclear engineering, praised the action as "something highly unusual" in the creation of public policy that "establishes a strong foundation for the legislation to be successful" if passed by Congress.