Right of the NUC website: sophisticated areas of research- yet they are not able to measure alpha emmissions?

Dear Friends:

The following is an excerpt of the research areas right of the webite of UC berkeley: Isn't it peculiar that they claim they cannot test for plutonium, strontium and uranium and the like, if that is so, how can they lecture on nuclear power plant design? Think again.

Fission Reactor Analysis

•Study in this area encompasses the synthesis of the basic components of nuclear technology in the engineering and design of nuclear reactors. Problems of heat removal, stress analysis, reactor dynamics and control, and nuclear reactor safety are considered. Current reactor designs are considered in support of life extension and near term construction, and future systems are also considered for future missions of high economic and safety performance, proliferation resistance, and capabilities to provide new products and services including hydrogen and actinide management.
Fuel Cycles and Radioactive Waste

•This area of study is devoted to the development of methods and models (theoretical and/or experimental) for analyzing processes that handle nuclear materials from cradle to grave. The methods and models developed are utilized for evaluating environmental impacts, economics, and proliferation resistance of a fuel cycle, and for designing an optimized fuel-cycle system. Basic research includes the development of deterministic models and the experimental data to support them, probabilistic methods and models and optimization methods. An initial focus is on Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, which aims at improved utilization of repository capacity for civilian spent nuclear fuel from current light-water reactors, with help of systems for separation and transmutation of problematic radionuclides.
Fusion Science and Technology

•This area of study deals with current approaches to the design of fusion power plants. For both the magnetic and the inertial confinement schemes, problems of particle confinement, plasma heating, reactor materials, fusion reactor neutronics, safety, and environmental impacts are analyzed. Experimental facilities for plasma research include the Berkeley Compact Toroid Experiment (BCTX) on the campus and several large collaborative efforts at LLNL and LBL. The Rotating Target Neutron Source (RTNS), an accelerator-based fusion neutron source, is also on theBerkeley campus and is used for fusion neutron studies.
Laser, Particle Beam, and Plasma Technologies

•This area of study includes a broad spectrum of new technologies related to charged particles and fields. The topical areas range from interaction of lasers with plasmas, to charged particle beam physics, to plasma technologies such as lighting and material processing discharges. Applications range from laser-plasma interactions to discharges for lighting, material modification and microelectronic fabrication, from microwave-beam interactions for microwave sources and plasma heating to plasma devices such as thrusters and ion and electron beam sources.