NUCLEAR ENGINEERING, B.S. at University of Wisconsin

The Department of Engineering Physics offers the B.S. degree in nuclear engineering and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in nuclear engineering and engineering physics.

Nuclear engineering is defined as the application of nuclear and radiation processes in technology. An important application is the generation of electricity using nuclear reactors. Another important application is in medicine, where radiation and radioisotopes are used to diagnose and treat illness. Nuclear engineering offers students an important opportunity to help meet the energy needs of our society and to contribute to the improvement of health through medical applications. Further, because the nuclear engineering curriculum is very rich in engineering physics, graduates are prepared to work in a number of technical activities outside the nuclear engineering field.

Nuclear energy, both from fission and fusion, offers a promising approach to meeting the nation's energy needs—an approach that may preserve jobs, raise the standard of living of Americans, and alleviate the depletion of natural resources including natural gas, petroleum, and coal. Even more important, nuclear energy offers the only practical, environmentally benign approach to generating electricity on a large scale because it releases no harmful SO2, NOX, CO2, or particulate matter into the atmosphere. Nuclear energy has played, and continues to play, an important role in space exploration. Nuclear engineering has enabled the use of isotopic power supplies in deep space probes like the Cassini mission, and may eventually be used to design fission or fusion-based systems for more demanding missions

Since the discovery of fission many years ago, electricity is being produced commercially in a several hundred billion-dollar industry. Applications of radioactive tracers have been made in medicine, science, and industry. Radiation from particle accelerators and materials made radioactive in nuclear reactors are used worldwide to treat cancer and other diseases, to provide power for satellite instrumentation, to preserve food, to sterilize medical supplies, to search for faults in welds and piping, and to polymerize chemicals. Low energy plasmas are used in the manufacture of microelectronics components and to improve the surface characteristics of materials. High energy plasmas offer the possibility of a new energy source using thermonuclear fusion.

Because the breadth and rate of change in this field requires that the nuclear engineer have a broad educational background, the curriculum consists of physics, math, materials science, electronics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, computers, courses in the humanities and social science areas, and numerous elective courses. Courses of a specific nuclear engineering content come primarily in the third and fourth years.

The curriculum prepares students for careers in the nuclear industry and government—with electric utility companies, in regulatory positions with the federal or state governments, or for major contractors on the design and testing of improved reactors for central station power generation or for propulsion of naval vessels.

The curriculum also prepares the graduate for work in many areas where a broad technical background is more important than specialization in a specific field. Thus, the graduate is also prepared to work in any area where a broad engineering background is helpful, such as management, technical sales, or law. The curriculum gives students excellent preparation for graduate study in the fission and fusion areas, medical and health physics, applied superconductivity, particle accelerator technology, and other areas of engineering science in addition to study in areas such as materials science, physics, mathematics, and medicine.