EXCELLENCE
Nuclear Science Center Excellence Fund
The Nuclear Science Excellence Fund is available for supporters to directly give to enable teaching, research, and growth for WSU students in the student reactor operator training program or the Nuclear & Chemical Science Core Facility. Your support will enable student opportunities like:
Network Building Opportunities – Undergraduate STEM majors with radio- and nuclear chemistry experience, and undergraduate reactor operators are highly sought-after candidates for jobs at U.S. National Laboratories. To help promote these interactions, NSC staff mentor students and aid in connections with scientists offsite and require occasional travel with students to symposia. NSC seeks to grow these symposia to regular annual visits to the Idaho National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to facilitate interactions between students and National Laboratory scientists, project managers, and administration.
Summer Intern, NUCS Core Facility – The Nuclear and Chemical Science (NUCS) Core Facility operates multiple pieces of scientific instrumentation available to research groups and clients inside and outside of WSU. Summer interns with the NUCS Core Facility gain experience in the maintenance and operation of equipment used to undertake scientific research. Interns also learn how to obtain research quality data, design and implement effective data security, scientific ethics, and how to provide deliverables to clients. Although an intern with any background can act as an intern at the NUCS Core Facility, an intern with a background in obtaining scientific data is preferred.
Enhancing Scientific Capabilities – The Nuclear and Chemical Science (NUCS) Core Facility is a University-level core instrument facility that operates and maintains scientific instrumentation utilized by research groups and corporate clients at WSU and throughout the world. Although the NUCS Core Facility aims to support research in the nuclear and chemical science fields, the scientific instrumentation available at the NUCS Core Facility are employed in just about any scientific and engineering discipline to advance knowledge through creative research and scholarship across a wide range of academic disciplines to help advance the research scholarship at WSU.
Reactor Operator Training Program – Each year, the Nuclear Science Center teaches a cadre of WSU students in nuclear science, reactor theory, radiation protection, health physics, emergency planning, and reactor operations. This two-semester course is currently free to the student and upon completion, the student is eligible to sit for the U.S. NRC reactor operator licensing exam for the WSU 1 MW TRIGA reactor.
Summer Intern, Reactor Operations – Once a student is licensed as a reactor operator, they have the option to work during the summer as an intern on the reactor operations team. There they learn to solve problems and develop plans and procedures under a regulatory framework for the enhancement of the reactor and associated safety systems and components. Students participate in the planning, performance, and deliverable stages of client irradiation projects while working with senior reactor operators and NSC senior staff in the completion of large irradiation research projects.