December 2023

December 15, 2023March 6, 2024

Karl van Bibber to lead research group awarded $3.7M to build new dark matter experiment

December 15, 2023

Engineering faculty and staff headshots at UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif. on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. (Photo by Adam Lau/Berkeley Engineering)

Last fall, a coalition of the Simons Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the John F. Templeton Foundation and the Gordon & Betty Moore foundation pledged a fund of $30M total for a 'tabletop experiments' solicitation. It was just announced that a team of researchers led by UCBNE faculty Karl van Bibber will be awarded $3.7M in funding to continue research about axions, particles believed to make up dark matter in the universe. Collaborators on the project include researchers from eleven institutions: UC Berkeley, Yale, Colorado, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Wellesley, ORNL, Stockholm, Iceland, ITMO/St. Petersburg and Cambridge. The experiment, “A Plasma Haloscope for the Post-Inflation Axion", will be sited at Yale, nearby the current HAYSTAC experiment, utilizing a large-bore 16 Tesla magnet. Berkeley's role is the development of metamaterial-based resonators for the conversion of dark matter axions into a very weak microwave signal, detectable with advanced quantum sensing techniques.

Learn more in the Simon Foundation announcement and the College of Engineering write-up.

December 12, 2023January 5, 2024

NRC Commission Issues Construction Permit for Hermes Demonstration Reactor

December 12, 2023

Logo courtesy of Kairos Power

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a construction permit to Kairos Power for the Hermes non-power demonstration reactor to be built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The demonstrator reactor is intended to provide operational data to support the development of a larger version for commercial power targeted in the early 2030s. The Hermes series aims to help mitigate technology, licensing, supply chain, and construction risk to achieve cost certainty for Kairos Power’s fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR) technology.

UCBNE faculty Per Peterson is one of the co-founders of Kairos Power alongside UCBNE alumn Mike Laufer.

Read the Kairos Power write-up and NRC press release.

December 7, 2023January 5, 2024

Per Peterson Reappointed to Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee

December 7, 2023

Governor Gavin Newson has reappointed UCBNE faculty Per Peterson to the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee (DCISC), a position Peterson has held since 2008. First created in 1990, the DCISC is a 3-person committee tasked with reviewing and making recommendations regarding the safety of PG&E's Diablo Canyon Power Plant located in San Luis Obispo County.

The governor's announcement:

"Per F. Peterson, of Berkeley, has been reappointed to the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee, where he has served since 2008. Peterson has been Chief Nuclear Officer at Kairos Power since 2017 and a Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley since 1990. He was Executive Associate Dean at the University of California, Berkeley from 2015 to 2017. Peterson is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Nuclear Society. He earned a Doctor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no state compensation. Peterson is a Democrat.”

Peterson will serve alongside Peter Lam and Robert J. Budnitz.

Learn more about the DCISC and how the public can get involved in meetings and tours.