The University has a Sub-scale See-Thru Nuclear Powerplant (above), the only in the Northeast. | Courtesy of NECN.COM

The University brought national attention to campus when it unveiled its Sub-scale See-Thru Nuclear Power Plant in United Technologies Hall last Friday, Feb. 15.

Designed and built by undergraduate and graduate students in the University’s College of Engineering, Technology and Architecture (CETA), under the direction of Professor Tom Filburn, the Sub-scale See-Thru Nuclear Power Plant is a training tool for University students, because it allows students to see what is happening within the nuclear reactor.

“Students learn from touching things and so a computer model gives them some information but when they can actually turn the valve and turn the pumps on and see the water flowing and see the boiling and the heat transfer going it just reinforces the subject matter,” Filburn said in video coverage by NBC.

With the University of Hartford being the only education institution in the Northeast with such a device, students can learn the inner workings of nuclear power with glass where metal would be, and thus can actually seen the inner workings of it.

“The fact that this is see-through, we can see that boiling happening in the reactor,” Graduate student Jason Smith said in that same NBC coverage.

Paid for with a $121,000 grant from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, $5,000 from Westinghouse and $10,000 from Dominion energy, the training tool will also be useful to new hires entering into the region’s nuclear power industry.

“There’s a tremendous number of folks that are going to be retiring from the existing nuclear plants,” Peter Lyons of the U.S. Dept. of Energy, said in that same NBC coverage.

“Many, many openings for new students with this type training and the opportunity to work with, essentially, a real life, mini reactor here in a completely safe environment is a wonderful learning tool.”