NNSA earmarks $50M to bolster nuclear security

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) has awarded a pair of university consortia grants totaling $50 million as a means of bolstering nuclear security.

NNSA officials said the Georgia Institute of Technology-led Consortium for Enabling Technologies & Innovation is a collection of 12 universities working to develop and refine technologies supporting the nonproliferation mission to detect and characterize the production of nuclear materials.

The Consortium for Monitoring, Technology & Verification, a partnership of 14 universities led by the University of Michigan, seeks to improve capabilities to monitor the global nuclear fuel cycle. The grants would support each consortium with $5 million per year for five years.

“These grants will foster development of concepts and technologies that keep the United States at the forefront of nuclear monitoring and verification capabilities and allow us to nurture tomorrow’s nonproliferation experts,” Brent K. Park, NNSA deputy administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, said.

The Consortium for Enabling Technologies & Innovation strives to perform basic research in computer and engineering sciences for nonproliferation, advanced manufacturing for nonproliferation, and novel instrumentation for nuclear fuel-cycle monitoring. The Consortium for Monitoring, Technology & Verification focus will be nuclear and particle physics, signals and source terms and the physics of monitoring nuclear materials.