MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering

The department’s Nuclear Science and Technology program is concerned with a wide range of nuclear science and engineering applications involving medicine and biology, information processing, materials research, industrial processes, and nuclear waste remediation.

Bionuclear science and engineering utilizes nuclear processes in a variety of ways impacting medicine and biology. For example nuclear radiation can be used as a medical diagnostic through imaging techniques. It can also be used for therapy: the boron-neutron interaction is being developed to treat rheumatoid arthritis and to possibly treat various serious forms of brain cancer. In another application, accelerator based technology is being developed to produce hard-to-obtain medical isotopes. To open a new frontier of bio-nuclear study, a new micro-beam accelerator has been just constructed whose goal is to allow for the first time a first principles understanding of the interaction of radiation with biological materials at the sub-cellular level.

Many students choosing to major in nuclear science and engineering are interested in applying to medical school to continue careers in the emerging field of nuclear medicine. The Department offers a suggested flexible curriculum that allows students to prepare for medical school entrance examinations while still taking the core nuclear engineering subjects.

Nuclear engineering (such as fission and fusion) has traditionally dealt with random processes, for which only the statistics can be controlled. A new frontier in nuclear engineering is to precisely control the quantum mechanical wave function of atomic and subatomic systems. Thus far, this has been achieved only in low energy processes, particularly nuclear magnetic resonance, a form of nuclear spectroscopy which has allowed the basic techniques needed for quantum control to be explored in unprecedented detail. The department has initiated an ambitious program in this area, which promises to be widely applicable in nanotechnology. The ultimate achievement would be the construction of a "quantum computer," which would be capable of solving problems that are far beyond the capacities of classical computers. Other significant applications are secure communication and the direct simulation of quantum physics.

A cross-cutting area of research in the department involves the area of nuclear materials research. There is an important need in the Nuclear Science and Technology program to understand how radiation interacts with biological materials. Similarly, there is considerable interest in the nuclear power and fusion programs to understand the effects of neutrons and other radiation on materials. Here, in order to achieve the full potential of nuclear energy from either fission or fusion reactors, it is necessary to develop special materials capable of withstanding intense radiation for long periods of time. It is also crucial to understand the phenomenon of corrosion in a radiation environment.

One of the important area of development in nuclear engineering today is the usage of neutrons in applications other than for power production, be it fission or fusion. Thermal and cold neutrons are marvelous tool for materials research due to very special properties of those neutrons: charge neutrality, having spin of 1/2, and quantum mechanical particles with wave lengths of the order of atomic spacing in matter. These unique attributes of neutrons enable them to be used as non-destructive and precise probes for molecular scale structure and dynamics of biological materials, advanced ceramics and high Tc superconductors. Currently the SNS (Spallation Neutron Source) project, being constructed at Oak Ridge National Lab., is the single most expensive science project funded by DOE (1.3 b$) for materials research in the 21st century. When completed in 2006, it will be the most powerful neutron source for materials research in the world and will open up a tremendous opportunity for young scientists of this generation.

Nuclear science and engineering makes important contributions to a wide range of industrial applications. Nuclear techniques are being used and developed for rapid, non-intrusive inspection of aircraft baggage and cargo. Another application is the development of a “plasma-window” which separates a vacuum region from a high pressure region without the need for a solid material structure. Such a window then allows ultra high power accelerator particle beams to propagate from one region to the other with out concern for window damage, which is often a limiting factor. Nuclear techniques have also been used to develop a non-invasive solidification sensor for the metal casting industry, to improve quality control and economic performance.

The department has an active program involving the important societal problem of the remediation of high level nuclear waste from nuclear power reactors and discarded nuclear weapons. The main issues of interest here involve the development of a better understanding of how various components of nuclear waste, with different half-lives and different chemical properties, can permeate or resist permeating the various materials used for containment. These materials include the glass used to encase certain waste and the rock material itself that may constitute a large scale repository (e.g. perhaps at Yucca Mountain).