College students at Kansas State University are increasingly eyeing careers in nuclear technology. So the school has relaunched a bachelor’s degree that originally blazed a trail in the U.S. for nuclear studies.
This news comes at a time when two advanced nuclear companies have announced plans to build reactors in Kansas.
In the 1950s, Kansas State University rolled out one of the first nuclear engineering curriculums in the world. By the early 1960s, the school had its own nuclear reactor facility.
But by the 1990s, student interest in pursuing careers in nuclear power was flagging — perhaps spurred by a broader downturn in public support for this energy source after high-profile incidents such as Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island.
In 1996, K-State discontinued its nuclear major and folded the curriculum into its mechanical engineering program, reducing it to a concentration or a minor.
But today’s students are proving much keener on nuclear technology — a trend showing up in the greater numbers signing up for that concentration.
“We’ve been seeing over the past five years a vast increase,” said Professor Amir Bahadori, who directs the program. “To be honest with you, we’re not entirely sure exactly what’s driving that.”
The faculty’s best guess? A combination of factors.
“Certainly the attention paid to nuclear by AI and tech companies we think is having a role,” Bahadori said, so is interest in generating electricity without burning fossil fuels.
But students have also become more intrigued in the uses of nuclear and radiological technologies outside the energy sector.
“Particularly in the health realm and defense sectors,” he said.
Bringing back the undergraduate major wasn’t a steep climb because K-State always kept its nuclear graduate programs. It also retained its nuclear reactor, one of 25 university research reactors in the country.
Last semester, the university relaunched the nuclear engineering major, which immediately attracted more than 50 students. For context, the U.S. graduated about 450 nuclear engineering majors nationwide in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education.
The strong out-of-the-gate number happened mostly because current students at K-State jumped at the chance to change their majors or to add nuclear engineering as a double major.
“We’re starting to see even high school students reach out to our college asking for tours of our building and the reactor,” Bahadori said. “We look forward to helping to alleviate the workforce shortage in nuclear engineering very soon.”
The reactor at K-State is used for teaching and research. Students can train to become reactor operators and then take a Nuclear Regulatory Commission test to earn federal certification.
