Dear Nuclear Engineering Alum,

It's a good time to be a nuclear engineer. The cloud of the current energy crisis has produced a silver lining in the increased interest in our field: undergraduate applications went from 39 in fall 2001 to 51 total for fall 2002.

For the past few years we've also been offering undergraduates the chance to minor in nuclear engineering. To serve the greater number of students, the department has been approved for an additional assistant professorship - our first new hire in more than six years. We are currently looking for a professor specializing in the area of nuclear materials and chemistry.

Department Honors
I'm proud to announce that our department has moved up two notches, to second place, in U.S. News & World Report's annual ranking of the country's top graduate programs in nuclear engineering.

NE professor Don Olander was inducted in 2000 into the National Academy of Engineering, our profession's highest honor. Don was honored for his "research on nuclear materials, including nuclear fuel element behavior in power reactors." A member of our faculty since 1961 and chair from 1979 to 1984, Don is also a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society (ANS).

At the 2002 ANS Student Conference held at Penn State, Berkeley NE students Carlos Barrera and Darby Kimbal won awards for their presentations "Scintillator Characterization Through Time-Correlated Photon Counting" and "Optimized-Core Comparison of Sodium and Lead-Bismuth Coolants for ATW Reactors." And in response to intensive work by Berkeley's student chapter of the ANS, we'll be hosting the conference next year. Also noteworthy: Elena Rodriguez-Vieitez won the Outstanding Presentation award in the Fuel Cycle and Nuclear Waste Management session at ANS's Student Mini-Conference in November 2001 for her presentation on the optimization of graphite-moderated molten-salt transmuters.

News and Activities
In February we cohosted a daylong workshop for 30-plus California high-school science teachers, a collaborative effort by volunteers from our department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. We gave the teachers full doses of the history of nuclear science, the sources and effects of radiation, and its use in cancer medical research, as well as a tour of LBNL's Advanced Light Source. They really enjoyed themselves. The workshop was part of the Science Education program of the Northern California chapters of the Health Physics Society and American Nuclear Society. In addition to two Geiger counters and a setup for a cloud chamber experiment, each teacher took home a tremendous amount of instructional material. Look under "News and Events" at our web site, www.nuc.berkeley.edu, to see the materials that were presented during the workshop - and please encourage science teachers in your local high schools to consider attending this workshop next year.

A distinguished visiting speaker gave a special colloquium in December of last year. Dr. Jacques Bouchard, the head of the Nuclear Energy Division of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), talked to faculty and students about safety-related and economic aspects of nuclear power. His lecture ranged from the French experience, where fuel is reprocessed and recycled and waste management is accepted, to the CEA's international R&D on new systems for the sustainable production of nuclear energy.

Key Research
Our department continues to break ground in innovative research. Professor-in-residence Ehud Greenspan is working on new techniques to transmute nuclear waste, sponsored by the Department of Energy's Accelerator Transmutation of Waste (ATW) project. The study's goal is to arrive at core designs and fuel-management schemes that will maximize the benefit from waste transmutation, particularly from the perspective of greatly expanding the long-term capacity of waste repositories.

Meanwhile, NE professor Jasmina Vujic and her graduate students are developing a new weapon in the fight against cancer. The new treatment, which applies Boron Neutron Capture Therapy, integrates computer simulation with a portable and inexpensive neutron beam generator to target tumors without causing the collateral damage of traditional X-ray and gamma-ray radiation therapy. The research has already yielded encouraging results in simulated treatments of deadly brain tumors. If it works, a patient may only need one 30-minute treatment instead of many.

Alumni News
For the latest in what's happening in our department, bookmark our recently redesigned home page at www.nuc.berkeley.edu. Also, the College's new online alumni community, Engineering@cal, has just gone live: by signing up at www.engineeralum.berkeley.edu, you'll be able to find friends in the online directory, get free e-mail forwarding (through an @berkeley.edu address), and network with other Cal grads.

Alumni Challenge Match
This year I especially encourage all alumni to make a gift to either the College of Engineering or to the Nuclear Engineering department. Your first-time gift will be matched, up to $100, if made by June 30. Please take advantage of the match - these dollars are critically needed and will be used effectively.

Many thanks for your support, and for staying in touch with Nuclear Engineering.
Sincerely,