UW May Disband Nuclear Engineering Program -- Professors See Industry Stalling

Nuclear engineering studies at the University of Washington may be put in mothballs along with much of the nuclear energy industry.

Professors in the UW department of nuclear engineering have asked to disband the department, saying they are having trouble recruiting good students into an ailing industry.

Graduate students in the program would be allowed to finish their degrees and the professors would take positions in other departments, said Kermit Garlid, department chairman.

The nuclear energy industry has been in disarray for years, unable to overcome repercussions of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, sloppy waste management and the bureaucratic disaster of WPPSS - the Washington Public Power Supply System.

Nuclear plants aren't being built, and old ones are being dismantled. Jobs are at a premium, research has stagnated, and students are saying no to a career that has such a stigma attached.

Nuclear engineering departments, particularly in universities in the Western part of the country, also have been in decline for several years, and those at the University of Arizona, Iowa State University and the University of California at Los Angeles have disbanded recently, Garlid said.

Departments in Eastern universities, where most of the country's nuclear power plants are, seem to be more stable.

The UW seldom dismantles a department. A review process for doing so was put in place in the early 1980s, when economic pressure led to doing away with several programs, including nutrition and kinesiology.

The UW has never had an undergraduate program in nuclear engineering, and students from elsewhere have just about stopped coming here for their master's and doctoral degrees.

Enrollment in the UW program has declined from a high of about 60 students in 1975 to fewer than 20 today.

Students from the program have gone on to successful jobs with consulting firms, utility companies and research labs, Garlid said. Many have worked on plans for nuclear waste management or written environmental impact studies for the Department of Energy.

The professors voted unanimously to ask that the department be abolished and future nuclear engineering degrees be awarded through the graduate school. The vote came after a routine 10-year audit of the program, in which the future of the program appeared doubtful. A committee is studying the request and a decision is expected next year.

``I think it's the best decision, but it's sad to see it happen,'' said Garlid. ``It was such an exciting thing when it got under way. We've worked very hard to pull it together.''

``I regret it, but I don't second-guess the faculty decision,'' said Gene Woodruff, dean of the graduate school and a nuclear engineer himself. ``I think it's admirable the faculty would take such an initiative. It shows a considerable concern for quality education on this campus. The easy thing would have been for the faculty to bump along until someone else decided it was time to disband.''

``I think it's a shame,'' said Tom Jarboe, a nuclear engineering professor. ``Nuclear engineering has had such a bad press in this country, and nuclear power has the least environmental impact of all the ways of providing power.''

``Degrees have currency, and we have to adjust to the marketplace,'' said J. Ray Bowen, dean of engineering. ``There are very few positions available in fission right now. If there's no great demand for the program right now, the people who are there can do nearly identical work in another discipline. They don't have to work through the nuclear engineering department.''

The department was started in 1965 by professors from chemical and electrical engineering departments who wanted to get in on what seemed to be a promising young science. No undergraduate degrees were offered because, ``We thought students coming in should have a solid base in science or other engineering subjects,'' said Garlid.

The program is divided into two components - fission and fusion. Fission, the release of energy by splitting atoms, has since become a mature technology where little cutting edge research is being done. Fusion, the release of energy by fusing atoms together, is a science perched on the edge.

Last year, the University of Utah said two scientists, Stanley Pons of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of Southampton University in England, had for the first time produced ``cold'' deuterium fusion in a simple laboratory experiment using tap water.

Their experiment was flawed, and scientists around the world couldn't reproduce the results. But it initially held the promise of an inexhaustible supply of energy from sea water.

Fusion experiments at the UW will continue in the engineering school's Aerospace and Energetics Research Program. In fact, some students have been admitted to the program for next fall.

But much of the fission research at the UW has been passed along to the private sector.

The university shut down its experimental reactor in 1988 after a ruling by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that universities would have to replace the weapons-grade fuel they were using with low-grade uranium. The ban affected 25 universities and laboratories across the country with small reactors, including the UW and Washington State University.

``We still get $600,000 to $700,000 a year from the Department of Energy,'' said Garlid. ``But in some cases, we have had more research than students, and students are the lifeblood of the department. Some faculty had trouble finding students to do the research they already had the funding for, and they'd end up recruiting students from other departments.''

Last year, the faculty made a brief attempt to recruit students.

``We put together a videotape and distributed it, figuring it was marketing,'' said Garlid. ``It had, as far as I was concerned, no discernible effect.''

The faculty, many of them highly respected in the field, finally decided ``they didn't want to spend the rest of their careers in what was no longer a viable program,'' Garlid said.

The UW-sponsored nuclear engineering program at the WSU branch campus in the Tri-Cities won't be affected by the dissolution of the department, Garlid said.

The program is offered whenever the need arises among employees of Westinghouse, Battelle or other firms connected to the Hanford nuclear industry.

Most of the faculty and administrators believe nuclear power will eventually gain the public trust it has needed and become a dominant source of energy over fossil fuels, said Woodruff, the graduate school dean.

``It could be five years, in which case it wouldn't make any sense to abolish the department. But it could be 10 years or more.''