Engineering professor to lead $5 million project investigating materials for safe storage of nuclear waste

Eric Lang, assistant professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, will lead a new consortium funded by the Minority Serving Institution Partnership Program in the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration to develop materials for safe and effective nuclear storage while creating a job pipeline to national laboratories.

The University of New Mexico, which is a designated Hispanic Serving Institution, will lead the project in collaboration with Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University and Prairie View Agriculture and Mechanical University, which are both designated Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories will work with the universities to help give students hands-on experiences at the labs throughout the year and over the summer.

The project is titled "MSI-Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) Partnership Program for the Development and Screening of Nanostructured Zirconate Analogues for Immobilization of Nuclear Fuel Waste," and will receive $5 million over the next five years.

Spent nuclear fuel poses a number of disposal challenges. In this project, Lang and other consortium members will fabricate materials for use in nuclear waste disposal and test them under different conditions.

"The work will focus on the development and testing of nuclear waste analog materials that will enable the safe storage of waste products when they are subjected to their storage environments, which could include radiation, corrosion, temperature evolution and other external stimuli," Lang said.

Each university will support a number of undergraduate and graduate researchers. Lang also anticipates the universities will facilitate student exchanges.

"The resources available to students at other institutions are different than what we can offer here and vice versa," he said. "Having students see different ways research can be conducted and having them gather a diverse understanding of the ways in which you can approach a problem is super important."

The project is one of seven federal grantsawarded to Minority Serving Institutions to build educational opportunities in STEM fields and offer experiential learning through collaborations with nuclear laboratories, plants or other site facilities.