2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The intent of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 was to establish a waste stream for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from operating reactors. To date, all efforts by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to establish a permanent repository for commercial SNF have been unsuccessful. In recent years, the DOE has focused on developing a consent-based siting process for a federal consolidated interim storage facility as a mechanism to meet its obligation to dispose of spent nuclear fuel.

With support from DOE, a group of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has developed and deployed a series of nuclear science and engineering (NSE) learning modules to facilitate dialogues about SNF disposal. These learning modules are based on a previously developed novel scientific framework, Small-To-Big Physics (S2BP) [1], to enable students to acquire sufficient knowledge of NSE concepts to have informed dialogues regarding the interdependency of technical and social factors of nuclear technology. These learning modules use tactile methods to establish a baseline of NSE prior knowledge, that can be later converted to understanding through guided dialogue, without reliance on math or complex scientific theory.

In summer 2024, twenty-four junior and senior high school students from the United States and Australia attended the RPI Pre-freshman and Cooperative Education (PREFACE) program, a two-week in-residence Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) camp on the RPI campus in Troy, NY. Participants engaged with just over ten hours of S2BP-related learning module content in preparation for approximately seven hours of facilitated dialogue culminating in student presentations regarding sociotechnical considerations related to SNF. The goals of this interdisciplinary summer experience were to 1) assess the general knowledge of and exposure to NSE concepts at the junior and senior level, 2) analyze the effectiveness of various NSE learning modules, and 3) evaluate the impact of NSE education on the support or opposition to incorporating a hypothetical CISF in participant communities. While this paper is focused on pedagogy for NSE education for students nearing the end of their secondary education, the learning modules and frameworks introduced and analyzed here offer arguments for fundamental shifts towards a more tactile, dialogic, and experiential approach to STEM education that could be adapted for diverse age groups, learning environments, educational levels, subject matters, and objectives.