Chaleff Receives DOE-NEUP Fellowship

Ethan Chaleff, a PhD student in nuclear engineering advised by Professor Thomas Blue, has accepted a U.S. Department of Energy-Nuclear Energy University Programs (DOE-NEUP) Fellowship that will provide $50,000 annually for three years of research and study. Chaleff has decided to defer the award until January 2014.

Chaleff's research is focused on the applications of a subset of nuclear reactors known as fluid-fueled reactors, reactors with their fuel in a molten or liquid state. Fluid fueled reactors offer tremendous potential benefit for power production, waste disposal and industrial process heat applications, but there are a number of unknowns in their design and development that has hindered their adoption. His research is focused on answering some of these unknowns with the hope that this will propel the reactor design forward after many years of stagnation. Specifically, he is studying how the optical properties of liquid fuel affect heat transfer in a molten salt reactor, and how the peculiarities of flowing fuel affect reactor dynamics. Eventually, he hopes to answer some specific and technical questions about what would be required to build, run and operate a waste burning plant to transmute long life nuclear waste from traditional plants into less dangerous, shorter lived isotopes.