Congratulations Sara Ferry

Congratulations Sara Ferry, Ph.D, first recipient of the NSE Joseph P. Kearney Fellowship

Sara Ferry: A new generation works to fulfill the promise of nuclear energy

The world of nuclear technology is in a generational transition. Many nuclear engineers and scientists were trained between the 1950s and 1970s, but entry to the field slowed in subsequent decades; NSE Ph.D. student Sara Ferry is part of a new cadre of technologists who are working to fulfill the promise of nuclear energy in a world very different from that of their predecessors.
Ferry, who earned her 2011 SB in Physics and Nuclear Science and Engineering with a minor in French, has made nuclear metallurgy a primary focus of her work. Her research at the Institute’s Uhlig Corrosion Laboratory involves “very broad analysis of atmospheric corrosion effects on stainless steel welds, with particular emphasis on stress corrosion cracking (SCC).”
The driver, explains Ferry, is the need for longer-than-anticipated on-site storage of used nuclear fuel, due to the difficulties of starting up a centralized national storage facility. “A lot of interim storage will have to be used for a lot longer than expected,” she explains. “The evidence is that it won’t be a huge problem, but research hasn’t been done into how stainless steel storage containers will behave over an extra 50 years beyond their initial 40-year design life. We know how SCC works, but we have to look at every on-site storage facility in the country – what are conditions like, what’s in the air, especially in particularly humid and coastal environments.”
While there are existing models for how the stainless canisters behave over time, they are general and have large uncertainties. Ferry says she and her colleagues will “develop a very rigorous probabilistic model that will, given a particular type of canister in a particular type of environment, be able to estimate with reduced uncertainty how long it will take for SCC to become an issue. It sounds straightforward, but a lot of issues come in.”
Among the advanced techniques used in their experimentation is newly developed atom-probe tomography (APT), which enables the team to go atom-by-atom through their material samples, gaining new physical insights and better understanding of corrosion and cracking mechanisms, which will help reduce uncertainty in lifetime predictions. Researchers in the Uhlig lab are also using APT techniques to explore the fundamental nature of environmental degradation in other materials used in nuclear power plants.
Long-term on-site storage is one example of how the nuclear power industry has had to adapt since its early days. Another is the need to win public trust for nuclear power in a world that is simultaneously threatened by carbon emissions and climate change and troubled by accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
“People miss the fact that nuclear engineers, especially in our generation, are in nuclear technology because of their environmentalism,” notes Ferry. “We believe it’s a very good option for right now, because it can be implemented right now. Wind and solar are wonderful parts of the energy picture, but no one thinks they will be enough. Conservation can be effective, but we can’t envision a future where we reduce electricity usage by 90 percent, which we’d have to do to cut carbon emissions to levels that the current administration advocates.”

Supporting NSE: Kearney Fellowship is legacy of a “Nuclear Green”

Michele Kearney describes her late husband Joe, a prominent nuclear engineer and energy executive, as “one of the first nuclear Greens” — an advocate of nuclear power on environmental grounds.
It’s an increasingly popular perspective today, but Kearney was bucking conventional wisdom when he and five other Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering alums laid out the case in a seminal 1974 position paper, “The Nuclear Debate: A Call to Reason.”
That spirit of reasoned, data-driven analysis is what Michele Kearney wanted to encourage when she endowed the Joseph P. Kearney Graduate Fellowship to support outstanding NSE graduate students whose studies of nuclear applications have the potential to contribute to innovation in the field of nuclear energy. (Inspired by the generous gift, friends and colleagues of Joe have established the separate Joseph P. Kearney Memorial Fund for Nuclear Research and Innovation, which will also support graduate students in the Department.)
“MIT fosters the ability to challenge the status quo. It doesn’t always make people happy, but it’s essential to have that academic freedom to challenge assumptions and move forward,” explains Kearney, who runs a popular news website for the international nuclear energy community and has an extensive public policy background, including posts at the federal Office of Management and Budget, Department of the Interior, and Environmental Protection Agency. “I like being able to foster that independence, especially in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, which is facing huge demands, and will have even more going forward. Fellowships are their number one need.”
NSE grad student Sara Ferry, recipient of the first Kearney Fellowship and herself an environmentalist, is studying metallurgical issues at the interdisciplinary Uhlig Corrosion Laboratory to help address the need for longer-than-expected on-site storage of used nuclear fuel — an important adaptation for the nuclear industry.
Indeed, MIT’s ability to bring multiple fields of knowledge to bear on major challenges, like energy and cancer, was a major factor in Kearney’s decision to contribute. “There’s a long history here of creating multi-disciplinary teams for problem solving,” she says. “There really isn’t another institution with that tradition of collaboration and team-building. Power generation is a sustainability issue, one that challenges us to figure out how best to manage and conserve our resources, and MIT is uniquely qualified to address it.”
But Kearney notes that her primary motivation was honoring her husband and his pioneering work in the US independent power generation business. As she puts it, “I wanted to give back to the institution that helped shape his career, and served as the foundation for so many of his collaborations, associations, and life-long friendships.”