A team consisting of Physics Professor Jeff Terry, Yong Yang (PI), University of Florida, and Yiren Chen, Argonne National Laboratory, has been awarded $489,135 by the U.S. Department of Energy for advanced nuclear materials research.

They received the award for their proposal “Understand the phase transformation of thermally aged and neutron irradiated duplex stainless steels used in LWRs.”

Terry’s research interests including developing new ways to ensure safer nuclear reactors. This project falls under that broad category. Terry will conduct synchrotron radiation measurements on duplex stainless steel samples used in Light Water Reactors (LWRs) to see how they weaken under extreme heat and neutron radiation conditions. He and his students will use X-ray diffraction and Extended X-ray Absorption Fine structure measurements at the Materials Research Collaborative Access Team (MRCAT) beamline at the Advanced Photon Source. Their ultimate goal is to provide guidance on the long- term operation and relicensing of the current LWR fleet.

The DOE announced recently that it will spend more than $82 million for advanced nuclear energy research, with 93 projects in 28 states. That includes almost $36 million for DOE’s Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) to support 49 advanced nuclear energy projects in universities in 24 states. Terry’s project falls under this NEUP program.