Dedicated students, distinguished colleagues and dear friends,

Happy Friday!

A barely noticed news item of late could be hugely consequential for Missouri, and by extension, for the country. Missouri was selected by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to convene an in-state nuclear summit this summer. Gov. Mike Kehoe aptly welcomed the news: “Expansions to Missouri’s nuclear capacity will make a meaningful contribution to the United States’ energy dominance, increase regional grid reliability, and provide a steady supply of alternative fuels that will empower private industry to meet their energy goals and reduce reliance on energy imports.”

As a sequel to my 2023 message on the topic, NGA’s announcement provided the opportunity for me to highlight our ongoing effort in establishing S&T’s Institute for Integrated Energy Systems (IIES), which focuses on nuclear energy. The goal of IIES is to combine different energy sources and technologies to create a more efficient, sustainable and reliable energy supply. IIES optimizes power generation and overall energy use by reducing, not eliminating, reliance on nonrenewable energy sources. Our nuclear engineering faculty, in collaboration with faculty from other engineering and science disciplines, are advancing nuclear technologies through research in nuclear materials, environmental impact assessments, power plant siting, and the use of digital twins and machine learning for lifecycle management. Additional focus areas include thermal hydraulics, radioisotope applications and the development of high-performance structural alloys. Our materials science faculty expertise in extreme-high-temperature materials for hypersonic applications is being applied to nuclear systems, particularly in addressing irradiation effects in fuels, insulators and reactor components.

Encouragingly, “There are more than a dozen companies racing to develop new, smaller and safer nuclear reactors. Some of these companies already have dozens of firm orders for reactors,” says Dr. Joe Newkirk, chair of our nuclear engineering and radiation science department at S&T. “These newer reactors are capable of being located close to where the energy will be used, i.e. possibly within a community instead of far away from a population center.”

As the United States sets the goal of tripling nuclear energy generation by 2050, the expanding nuclear industry plans to deploy new reactors to provide round-the-clock clean, reliable and abundant energy without interruption, alongside a projected quadrupling of the nuclear workforce to meet growing demand. And for good reason. Energy-intensive technologies, like data centers that deliver AI and Bitcoin computations, need reliable and abundant energy. As a result, companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and others have established new divisions exclusively devoted to nuclear energy generation. They see nuclear as the only answer to their incredible thirst for electricity.

Fortunately, micro-thermonuclear reactors also produce the abundant heat needed in processes to develop medicine, fertilizers, concrete and possibly hydrogen, among many others. 

Not surprisingly, military bases are also aspiring to have a reactor on every base to provide energy security for their operations. Similarly, the shipping industry is considering nuclear-powered maritime commercial vessels for much faster transportation without the need to refuel.

It is inevitable that the energy needs of the future call for a multi-modal approach to power generation, transmission and distribution. Nuclear, in general, and thousands of small modular reactors (SMRs) in particular, as the most reliable, affordable and renewable source, must and will be a part of the solution. 

Scary? It shouldn’t be. When it comes to safety, SMRs incorporate extreme engineering safety features. And, here at S&T, with our focus on engineering and science of design safety, our nuclear engineering team is Solving for Tomorrow by embracing what must be done today.

Warmly,

-Mo.

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Mohammad Dehghani, PhD
Chancellor
mo@mst.edu | 573-341-4116

206 Parker Hall, 300 West 13th Street, Rolla, MO 65409-0910
chancellor.mst.edu