Traveling wave reactorA traveling-wave reactor (TWR) is a proposed type of nuclear fission reactor that can convert fertile material into usable fuel through nuclear transmutation, in tandem with the burnup of fissile material. TWRs differ from other kinds of fast-neutron and breeder reactors in their ability to use fuel efficiently without uranium enrichment or reprocessing, instead directly using depleted uranium, natural uranium, thorium, spent fuel removed from light water reactors, or some combination of these materials.
ToolA tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates back hundreds of millennia, have been observed using tools to make other tools. Early human tools, made of such materials as stone, bone, and wood, were used for the preparation of food, hunting, the manufacture of weapons, and the working of materials to produce clothing and useful artifacts and crafts such as pottery, along with the construction of housing, businesses, infrastructure, and transportation.
Decay heatDecay heat is the heat released as a result of radioactive decay. This heat is produced as an effect of radiation on materials: the energy of the alpha, beta or gamma radiation is converted into the thermal movement of atoms. Decay heat occurs naturally from decay of long-lived radioisotopes that are primordially present from the Earth's formation. In nuclear reactor engineering, decay heat continues to be generated after the reactor has been shut down (see SCRAM and nuclear chain reactions) and power generation has been suspended.
Fermi 1Fermi 1 was the United States' only demonstration-scale breeder reactor, built during the 1950s at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station on the western shore of Lake Erie south of Detroit, Michigan. It used the sodium-cooled fast reactor cycle, in which liquid sodium metal is used as the primary coolant instead of more typical nuclear reactor designs which are cooled with water. Sodium cooling allows for a more compact core with surplus neutrons, which are used to produce more fission fuel by converting a surrounding "blanket" of 238U into 239Pu which can be fed back into a reactor.
Postdoctoral researcherA postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary academic appointment, sometimes in preparation for an academic faculty position. According to data from the US National science foundation. The number of holders of PhD in Biological sciences who end up in tenure track has consistently dropped in the last decades from over 50% in the 1970s to contemporary levels of 20% [direct reference needed].
Safety engineeringSafety engineering is an engineering discipline which assures that engineered systems provide acceptable levels of safety. It is strongly related to industrial engineering/systems engineering, and the subset system safety engineering. Safety engineering assures that a life-critical system behaves as needed, even when components fail. Analysis techniques can be split into two categories: qualitative and quantitative methods. Both approaches share the goal of finding causal dependencies between a hazard on system level and failures of individual components.
List of fields of doctoral studies in the United StatesThis is the list of the fields of doctoral studies in the United States used for the annual Survey of Earned Doctorates, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies, as used for the 2015 survey. These are fields of research-oriented doctoral studies, leading mostly to Ph.D.s – in the academic year 2014–15, 98% of the 55,006 research doctorates awarded in the U.S. were Ph.D.s; 1.1% were Ed.D.s; 0.9% were other research doctorates.
