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Media Relations and Marketing
9 Anderson Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506-0117
Phone: 785-532-6415
Fax: 785-532-6418

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Information provided by K-State Media Relations, K-State's news service, may be reproduced without permission. The marks and names of Kansas State University are protected trademarks and may not be used in any commercial or private endeavor without the approval of the university.

Sources: Terry King, 785-532-5590, tsking@k-state.edu; Mo Hosni, 785-532-5610, hosni@k-state.edu; Ken Shultis, 785-532-5626, jks@k-state.edu
News release prepared by: Tim Lindemuth, K-State Alumni Association

A RADIANT TURNAROUND: NUCLEAR ENGINEERING STAGES A COMEBACK

MANHATTAN -- During the late 1990s, things became so bleak for Kansas State University's nuclear engineering department that less than 20 students declared it as an undergraduate major (in 1963 there were 142 students). The nuclear reactor in Ward Hall siphoned scarce operating dollars out of the College of Engineering. Darkness filled once-busy nuclear engineering laboratories, while obsolete teaching equipment gathered dust in vacant classrooms converted into storage rooms.

Something had to be done to stop the hemorrhaging in Ward Hall, and hard choices had to be made. Either kill the program and shut down the reactor as many universities nationwide were doing, or find the resources to rebuild the program. The fate of K-State's nuclear engineering rested with four key players -- the provost, dean, department head and a longtime professor.

Today there's a renaissance in nuclear engineering at K-State with a threefold enrollment increase since 2002. Research funding has gone from $100,000 to $4.5 million with the recruitment of two eminent scholars. Events in the U.S. nuclear industry also are adding trump cards to K-State's hand.

"The United States presently has 103 operating nuclear power plants with decades of operating life still ahead," said Mo Hosni, head of the department of mechanical and nuclear engineering. "The U.S. Navy operates an additional 119 nuclear reactors for propulsion of its vessels."

The initial waves of college graduates in the 1960s who work in these industries are retiring, but fewer than 30 universities today are graduating nuclear engineers.

"More than half of the entire nuclear workforce is over 50 and must be replaced in the next 15 years," Hosni said. "Employers are resorting to calling retired employees back to work for the lack of trained engineers."

With all the nuclear cutbacks at other schools, K-State is positioned to capitalize on these industry demands, said Terry King, dean of engineering.

K-State bucks national trend and saves its nuclear reactor

In 1996, the College of Engineering merged the nuclear and mechanical engineering departments and changed the nuclear engineering major to an option for students as an initial step to salvage the program.

"Following the merger, however, most of our nuclear engineering leadership was lost to retirement," Hosni said. "Enrollment and research support continued to fall to all-time lows by 2002."

The nuclear engineering faculty, which once numbered seven in 1963, numbered one -- Ken Shultis, nuclear program director who joined the faculty in 1969. Hosni said attempts to hire and keep two more nuclear faculty failed in 2000 when the newcomers were lured away by high salaries at a national laboratory and a government agency.

Larry R. Foulke, immediate past national president of the American Nuclear Society and a 1960 K-State graduate, explained what he saw happening nationwide in nuclear education.

"Nuclear engineering was the sexiest program around in the 1950s. We attracted the best students, and there was a demand for graduates to work at the nuclear power plants that were being built," Foulke said.

In 1958, K-State was the third U.S. university to create a nuclear engineering program behind the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan. K-State's program has the distinction of being the first to gain accreditation in 1964.

Then, public opinion for the industry soured, Foulke said. It wasn't cool to major in nuclear engineering. "The Three Mile Island power plant scare in 1979 and the Soviet Union's catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986 created much negative publicity," Foulke said.

The cost to build nuclear power plants ran into the billions of dollars, scaring away investors, while anti-nuclear activists caused construction delays of up to 12 years. In reality, nuclear energy is one of the most highly regulated, inspected, monitored and upgraded industries in the United States.

"Still, there hasn't been a new nuclear power plant ordered in the United States in 25 years," Foulke said.

A perception existed among students that nuclear engineers weren't needed, yet the opposite was true.

Half of the 48 universities with nuclear engineering programs in the early 1970s had closed their departments by 2001, Foulke said. Universities also shut down their research nuclear reactors, including the University of Kansas. Where there had been 65 research reactors in 1980, only 24 remained in 2004. One of those was K-State's TRIGA® reactor, and it was being considered for closure. Consultants said the reactor's shutdown and site cleanup would cost K-State $5 million. They also declared the reactor to be in excellent condition with a value of $25 million if constructed today. Extensively upgraded since it was built in 1962, the reactor originally cost $650,000. The K-Staters realized the reactor was a campus gem to be saved.