Teaching and Research:
D.R. Olander teaches the Department’s three courses in nuclear materials: an undergraduate course dealing with nuclear fuels and graduate courses on irradiation effects in metals and on corrosion in nuclear power systems. His research parallels the coverage of these courses, with emphasis on the chemical aspects of nuclear materials.

In-reactor performance and lifetime of nuclear fuel elements are controlled by the limitation of the materials of which they are made. Metallic and ceramic components of the core must operate in an environment that combines high temperatures, intense radiation fields, and corrosive chemical species. The nuclear materials research program at Berkeley is concerned principally with the chemical and physical behavior of the fuel and the cladding under these conditions. The experiments are intended to provide insight into the mechanisms of the phenomena involved, since fundamental understanding is ultimately useful in technological design. The research utilizes a variety of high-temperature furnaces and in-situ microbalances for continuously recording reaction rates.

Areas of Interest:
High-temperature kinetic and thermodynamic behavior of nuclear reactor fuels; performance of degraded nuclear fuels