Students in Illinois Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering will get a big boost in their educational experience from an addition to Talbot Laboratory that will create state-of-the-art instructional facilities in radiation measurements and nuclear materials.
The two new laboratories will be housed on the first floor of the 3-story addition. A groundbreaking is expected this Spring. The two instructional laboratories will cover an area of about 2,100 square feet of the new first floor addition. Created will be:
- A Radiation Measurements Instructional Lab that will support the NPRE radiological students as well as a growing number of students and interactions in the areas of nuclear medical imaging and nuclear medicine therapeutic technologies. This space would house the facilities for NPRE 444, Nuclear Analytical Methods Lab, which currently has no assigned laboratory space. This lab is required course for NPRE students in the radiological degree path and is an open elective for other students. BioE students interested in these technologies are also likely to participate in the course. A growing number of graduate students are expected to take this course as a basis for advanced research in the areas of radiation detection with applications in homeland security and medical imaging. This expansion would take up about half of the available space.
- A Nuclear Materials Lab with materials fabrication and analysis equipment specific to nuclear systems, occupying the remaining expansion space. This facility would complement the Materials Properties Instructional Lab on the second floor of Talbot and provide significant instructional lab space for the development of new materials with irradiation resistance and advanced mechanical properties. The lab would concentrate on testing and analysis facilities not available elsewhere in Illinois Engineering instructional labs. This new lab space connects well with the refurbished VisBox virtual teaching lab and the NPRE student computer room facilities, which are just to the west of the area on the first floor. NPRE also plans to expand the computer facilities in conjunction with the lab development to provide a better coordination between the experimental and (computer) analysis functions of both the Radiation Measurements and the Nuclear Materials Labs.
NPRE students will further benefit from the new Instructional Facility that will be built at the corner of Springfield Avenue and Wright Street, just north of Talbot Laboratory. The groundbreaking for that building, a campus initiative that will provide additional classroom space for NPRE and other departments, is set for April 12, 2019.