Research, Testing Facilities & Labs

The $2 million annual departmental research budget is funded by international, federal, state, and private agencies including:

Instrumentation Development

The Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics was recently awarded a $1.25M grant from the NNSA to conduct research into the use of scintillating detectors to support the mission of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. These detectors will use high-speed digital circuitry and smart technology to detect the gaseous emissions resulting from underground nuclear tests in all parts of the world. Research to design and test simultaneous beta and gamma spectroscopy systems has been in progress in our laboratories for the past few years, with $660k funding provided by the DOE/NEER program. Students with appropriate backgrounds (physics, electronics, engineering, etc) have the opportunity to work on various projects related to instrumentation development.

Multi-Application Small Light Water Reactor (MASLWR)

Constructed of stainless steel components, the MASLWR design is a one-third scale full system pressure and temperature reactor.

The MASLWR test facility is used to examine methods for circulation start-ups, helical steam generator heat transfer and a wide range of accident conditions.

MASLWR is a modular design capable of rail transport to its desired location. This allows off-site refueling and provides added security features as a fully encapsulated transport with a hands-off operating capability of five years.

One of MASLWR's most attractive safety features is its passively-safe design which naturally cools itself through gravity and natural circulation.

Advanced Plant Experiment Test Facility (APEX)

The OSU APEX facility is one-quarter scale reduced pressure integral system used to perform certification testing and analysis of the AP600 and AP1000 reactor designs for Westinghouse.

These simplified passively safe systems cool the reactor core using gravity and natural circulation.

OSU's APEX facility is the only test facility to have passed government certification testing for an industry reactor design.

Non-Proliferation

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is sponsoring research into the calculation of the antineutrino source term for a variety of nuclear reactor operation scenarios. LLNL has developed a relatively small and portable antineutrino detector for reactor power monitoring. Alex Misner, the grad student working on this project is has been awarded a prestigious Glenn Seaborg Institute Graduate Fellowship. A collaborative effort is underway between Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, Transpire, Inc., and NERHP researchers at Oregon State to develop the Radiation Detection Scenario Analysis Toolkit (RADSAT). RADSAT will allow first responders and other users of radiation detection instrumentation to quickly evaluate technological alternatives for a variety of in-the-field scenarios. This toolkit utilizes deterministic radiation transport methods for the calculation the distribution of radiation incident on the detector, and OSU researchers are investigating the development deterministic methods for the calculation detector response functions.

Computational Methods for Radiation Transport

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is sponsoring research at OSU and North Carolina State University to investigate the properties of several characteristic-based transport methods in 1-d spherical and r-z geometries.

Computational Medical Physics

A collaborative project is underway between researchers in the OSU NERHP department, the Department of Radiation Oncology at OHSU and Transpire, Inc. to compare deterministic and Monte Carlo dose calculations of the MammositeTM breast cancer radiation treatment system. Of particular interest is the effect of heterogeneity at material interfaces (tissue/bone, tissue/air).

Oregon State University Radiation Center is one of the top ranked institutional programs of its type in the country.

The OSU Radiation Center houses the Department of Nuclear Engineering & Radiation Health Physics and is the foundation for the majority of radiation-related work conducted by the faculty and students.

There is no other university facility with the combined capabilities of the OSU Radiation Center in the western half of the United States.

This unique facility serves the entire Oregon State University Campus as well as other Oregon universities and numerous institutions of higher education throughout the nation.

The Radiation Center and its staff actively support programs carried out by State of Oregon agencies such as the Oregon Department of Energy, the Oregon Health Division and the Oregon State Police.