Unusual Programs is an occasional sequence from The Dialog U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to educating.
Title after all:
Socially Engaged Design of Nuclear Power Applied sciences
What prompted the thought for the course?
The 2 of us had some expertise with participatory design coming into this course, and we had a shared curiosity in bringing digital actuality right into a first-year design class on the College of Michigan.
It appeared like match to assist college students find out about nuclear applied sciences, provided that hands-on expertise could be troublesome to supply in that context. We each wished to show college students in regards to the social and environmental implications of engineering work, too.
Aditi is a nuclear engineer and had been utilizing participatory design in her analysis, and Katie had been educating ethics and design to engineering college students for a few years.
What does the course discover?
Broadly, the course explores engineering design. We introduce our college students to the rules of nuclear engineering and vitality programs design, and we undergo moral considerations. Additionally they be taught communication methods – like writing for various audiences.
College students be taught to design the outside options of nuclear vitality amenities in collaboration with native communities. The course focuses on a unique nuclear vitality expertise every year.
Within the first 12 months, the main focus was on fusion vitality programs. In fall 2024, we checked out finding nuclear microreactors close to native communities.
The primary venture was to collaboratively resolve the place a microreactor is perhaps sited, what it would appear to be, and what outcomes the neighborhood want to see versus which might trigger concern.
College students additionally take into consideration designing nuclear programs with each future generations and a shared frequent good in thoughts.
The category explores engineering as a sociotechnical follow – which means that applied sciences aren’t impartial. They form and have an effect on social life, for higher and for worse. To us, a sociotechnical engineer is somebody who adheres to scientific and engineering fundamentals, communicates ethically and designs in collaboration with the people who find themselves prone to be affected by their work.
At school, we assist our college students replicate on these challenges and obligations.
Why is that this course related now?
Nuclear vitality system design is advancing rapidly, permitting engineers to rethink how they strategy design. Fusion vitality programs and fission microreactors are two areas of quickly evolving innovation.
Microreactors are smaller than conventional nuclear vitality programs, so planners can place them nearer to communities. These smaller reactors will possible be safer to run and function, and could also be match for rural communities seeking to transition to carbon-neutral vitality programs.
However for the wants, considerations and information of native folks to form the design course of, native communities must be concerned in these reactor siting and design conversations.
College students within the course discover nuclear amenities in digital actuality.
Thomas Barwick/DigitalVision through Getty Photographs
What supplies does the course characteristic?
We use digital actuality fashions of each fission and fusion reactors, together with fashions of vitality system amenities. AI picture mills are useful for speedy prototyping – we’ve used these at school with college students and in workshops.
This 12 months, we’re additionally inviting college students to do some hands-on prototyping with scrap supplies for a venture on nuclear vitality programs.
What is going to the course put together college students to do?
College students depart the course understanding that neighborhood engagement is a necessary – not non-compulsory – element of excellent design. We equip college students to strategy expertise use and improvement with customers’ wants and considerations in thoughts.
Particularly, they discover ways to have interaction with and observe communities utilizing moral, respectful strategies that align with the college’s engineering analysis requirements.
What’s a vital lesson from the course?
As instructors, we’ve a chance – and doubtless additionally an obligation – to be taught from college students as a lot as we’re educating them course content material. Gen Z college students have grown up with environmental and social considerations as centerpieces of their media diets, and we’ve observed that they are usually extra strongly invested in these subjects than earlier generations of engineering college students.
