History of the Department
The Oregon State University graduate program in nuclear engineering was established in 1959 as a degree program through the Mechanical Engineering department. The newly formed program included a small AGN-201 training reactor, the first nuclear reactor in the state of Oregon.
In June of 1964, the Radiation Center with its offices and laboratories was completed mainly for growing nuclear science and engineering related research programs. The second phase, completed in March of 1967, involved construction of the reactor building on the north end of the Radiation Center, in which is housed a 1.1 MW TRIGA reactor. Oregon State University was among the first in the nation to offer an undergraduate curriculum in nuclear engineering. In 1968 the first Bachelor of Science in Nuclear Engineering was awarded, and the first freshman nuclear engineering class enrolled. Later in 1970, a nuclear engineering technology program was established for students who would find their primary employment with the nuclear utility industry and would be technologists rather than engineers.
The Nuclear Engineering Department was established as a separate entity in 1972. That same year, the undergraduate nuclear engineering program received accreditation for six years by the Engineering Council for Professional Development. In 1978, the nuclear engineering and nuclear engineering technology programs were both accredited for an additional six years. In the same year, the nuclear engineering technology program was suspended for lack of enrollment. The last nuclear engineering technology student graduated in 1981, and the program has since been discontinued. The most recent Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (A.B.E.T.) review was performed in 2002 with accreditation granted through 2008. The Nuclear Engineering graduate program has a long record of success and continues to be a vital part of the College of Engineering.
The radiation health physics program also has a long and successful history at OSU. In fact, the Radiation Health program has been offered at Oregon State University since 1963 through the General Science Department in the OSU College of Science. In 1988 the M.S. program was transferred to the Department of Nuclear Engineering with the B. S. program following in 1991. There was a subsequent curricular change that resulted in the renaming of the degrees to Radiation Health Physics (RHP). In 1997 the Oregon State Board of Higher Education approved the Department to begin offering the Ph.D. in Radiation Health Physics. In 2002, the RHP undergraduate program became A.B.E.T. accredited for a period of six years. During the past decade the program has expanded in student enrollment, research activity and in the number of departmental faculty working in the field. The name of the department was changed to the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics in 2001.
