UCLA Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering
C & EE 200 Seminar
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2017
4275 BOELTER HALL 11:00 to 12:00 PM
Advanced Applications for Nuclear Power Plants
By
Mikael Nilsson

The (by some) much anticipated Nuclear Renaissance never materialized in the United States. While other countries are expanding their nuclear power plant fleet we appear to be shrinking ours. With the low price of fossil fuels, especially natural gas, nuclear power plants might not be competitive if the sole product is electricity. With advanced technology, available to us today there are certain improvements that can be made to make nuclear power more competitive. Furthermore, past studies have shown that there is an untapped potential for high value products that can be produced using nuclear power plants. In this talk I will discuss advances in nuclear power and nuclear fuel cycles and in addition, I will discuss possible applications for nuclear energy other than a source of electricity.

Dr. Mikael Nilsson is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of California, Irvine. Before 2009, Dr. Nilsson was a post doctoral research associate at Washington State University. He graduated with an M.S. in chemical engineering in 2000, and with a Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry in December 2005 from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. During his M.S. and Ph.D. studies, Dr. Nilsson was one of the Swedish contributors to the European projects for partitioning of spent nuclear fuel, PARTNEW and EUROPART. He was also a member of the Swedish reference group on partitioning and transmutation research during this time. In 2004, he was a visiting scientist at the research center in Jülich, Germany. Between September and November 2008, Dr. Nilsson was a visiting scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. In October 2010, he became a certified senior reactor operator for the UC Irvine TRIGA nuclear reactor. At UC Irvine, Dr. Nilsson teaches courses in Advanced Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics, Chemical Engineering Unit Operations
(laboratory course), The Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Introduction to Nuclear Chemical Engineering, and Radioisotope Techniques, and is involved in summer programs for nuclear reactor operators. His research interests include actinide chemistry, solvent extraction fundamental chemistry and process development, extraction and detection equipment development, radiolysis and phase composition of organic solvents. Dr. Nilsson’s research group currently comprises one post-doctoral researcher, twelve graduate student researchers and four undergraduate students. He is active in the Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society.