(NECN: Brian Burnell, West Hartford, Conn.) - What if you could take a nuclear power plant and shrink it down to table top size? The University of Hartford unveiled a working sub-scale, see-through nuclear power plant at the university's School of Engineering.
Students use the plant to learn the inner workings of nuclear power and, with glass where metal would be, they can actually see those inner workings. Without getting too technical here, there is a difference between transition boiling, like you do on your stove, and nucleate boiling which happens in a nuclear power plant.
"Students don't see that. It's not something you see everyday. The fact that this is see-through, we can see that boiling happening in the reactor. That would be an 'ah ha' moment," grad student Jason Smith says.
We couldn’t see it because of a problem with the reactor that cropped up this morning. But problems are learning opportunities, the type that Professor Tom Filburn says you just don't get with computer simulations.
"Students learn from touching things and so a computer model gives them some information but when they can actually turn the valve and turn the pumps on and see the water flowing and see the boiling and the heat transfer going it just reinforces the subject matter," Filburn says.
This was paid for with a $121,000 grant from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, $5,000 from Westinghouse and $10,000 from Dominion energy. At The university of Hartford they are training engineers.
Tanya Parwani-Jaimes is with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
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"Our programs are also available to two-year institutions such as trade schools and community colleges," in an effort to train nuclear technicians, Tanay Parwani-Jaimes of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says.
The people who work in the power plants, and we're going to need them as well as new engineers.
"There's a tremendous number of folks that are going to be retiring from the existing nuclear plants. Many, many openings for new students with this type training and the opportunity to work with, essentially, a real life, mini reactor here in a completely safe environment is a wonderful learning tool," Peter Lyons of the U.S. Dept. of Energy points out.
The one thing that is missing here, and it is crucial, you can probably guess what it is: Nuclear fuel. The security requirements for getting that are much higher than what the University of Hartford can deal with.
