My group does research to investigate the way materials perform in nuclear environments
and the objective here is to both develop the ability to predict how long
materials will survive in that environment before they need to be replaced and also
very strongly tied to the economics of nuclear power as well as number of energy technologies.
I like to take a paperclip. If you bend a paperclip, that paperclip is pretty easy
to bend at first. You can bend it, but as you bend it back and forth it gets stronger and stronger
and harder and harder to bend. And eventually that thing breaks. My research is really trying to understand,
at a level that is so microscopic you can't see it through an optical microscope,
what caused that paper clip to get stronger and stronger and ultimately break? And that's what my research is trying to do,
not with a paper clip, but with an engineering material.
The place where we play a key role is when there are safety critical components like,
the pressure vessel, and, if the pressure vessel were to break and you dropped half of the vessel
and you drop the core, and it would be the classic China Syndrome accident scenario. Our research is trying to make sure
that we know before and can predict when an accident like that would happen so that we make sure
that we never operate the plants to there.
In my research, I'm concerned with how materials respond to extreme environments and
the combination of UT and Oak Ridge National Lab, and the Governor's Chair program
puts me in an environment where there is a very strong nuclear engineering program. There's an up and coming university with an administration
that supports very strongly the drive to turn the University of Tennessee in to a top 25 research university
and a national lab that is renown for its expertise in material science.
Add on top of that what a fabulous place Eastern Tennessee is to live and
for me, it was a no brainer.