$774,000 NSERC Funding Boosts Nuclear Engineering
March 06, 2009
Professor Stavros Tavoularis, in collaboration with Adjunct Professor Dionysius Groeneveld, both of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Ottawa, has been awarded four Collaborative Research and Development Grants by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada under the NSERC/NRCan/AECL Generation IV Energy Technologies Program (NNAPJ). The total amount awarded was $774,500 over three years.
This is major research funding that will boost nuclear engineering research in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Ottawa. Funds will support the Canadian National Program on Generation IV Energy Technologies for the development of a Super Critical Water-cooled Reactor (SCWR), which, compared to existing nuclear reactors, is expected to have increased safety, lower-cost electricity production, more compact size, and reduced volume of nuclear wastes. Its objective is to establish an experimental facility suitable for supercritical heat transfer studies with carbon dioxide flow in circular tubes and through rod-bundle subassemblies, and then to conduct heat transfer and turbulence measurements in such flows.
This program will employ several graduate and undergraduate students as well as post-doctoral fellows and technical staff, providing them with advanced, hands-on experience in nuclear power research, a field that is vital for greenhouse gas reduction, the Canadian economy, international competitiveness, and consumer demands, and in which there is a great lack of qualified personnel.
This grant follows earlier research contributions from Sun Microsystems of Canada and the Ontario Research Fund-Research Excellence Program through the High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory (HPCL) and Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. (AECL) in support of a university research Chair. Professor Stavros Tavoularis, the nominee for the Chair, will engage in cutting edge research in the field of nuclear engineering. Having hosted the World Nuclear University Summer Institute during the summer of 2008, and having acquired significant funding for nuclear engineering research, the University of Ottawa has renewed its long-standing commitment to nuclear research in its Faculty of Engineering.
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