With new interest nationally and in our state, there’s a nuclear energy renaissance in the works. Fission reactors already generate reliable and robust energy, without producing greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear fusion energy technology, while still in the development stage, promises near limitless power soon. In the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering, we’re pioneering advances in both types of nuclear power. We’re bringing promising nuclear technologies to market. And we’re educating tomorrow’s leaders in this ever-expanding field.
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R&D grants from the DOE Nuclear Energy University Program since 2009
US Dollars45MPlus
from the DOE Nuclear Energy University Program since 2009
US Dollars20MPlus
in DOE NEUP grants over the past five years
Future of fission
More than 30 countries have signed on to a declaration to triple the world’s nuclear energy capacity by 2050, an effort led in part by the World Nuclear Association—an organization whose director general, Sama Bilbao y León (MS ’96, PhD ’99), is a UW-Madison nuclear engineering alumna.
Our faculty is developing technologies such as machine learning, 3D printing and advanced nuclear diagnostics to ensure the safety of traditional fission reactors and to develop the advanced materials and manufacturing needed for next-generation reactors.
They’re also investigating microreactors as economical, efficient power sources, exploring ways to integrate nuclear with renewable energy technologies like solar, and devising energy policy ideas for implementing an array of energy sources. The optimal energy lineup will almost certainly include new fission reactors for “baseload” power to supplement the nearly 100 currently in operation across the country.
U.S. Department of Energy distinguished early career program award winner
“The challenge facing us is that in the coming decades, some of these older reactors will be facing decommission. If we don’t start building new reactors, that 20% of the energy we get from nuclear power is going to decrease.”
Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics
Fusion quest
Our research into nuclear materials and thermal fluids, which are used to cool reactors and transfer heat, also applies to fusion.
UW-Madison’s eminence in fusion energy and plasma physics research dates to the 1960s. With more than 580 PhD graduates to date, we’re proud to carry that legacy forward.
Our researchers continue to study the fundamental science at work in future fusion pilot plants, where plasma, the ionized gas that acts as the fuel and produces energy, is confined. Through partnerships spanning the globe, Badger nuclear engineers work with some of the world’s largest fusion experiments.
But we’re also engineering the technologies to help make fusion energy a reality. Two groups of faculty have launched fusion companies, both aiming to bring commercial reactors to the market.
Progress on the path to fusion
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The new frontier in fusion
We’ve provided mankind access to knowledge that allows us to harness a plasma. Now, though advanced manufacturing capabilities, along with collaborators in disciplines like materials science, mechanical engineering and industrial engineering, we’re engineering materials that can survive in extreme conditions and make fusion economically viable.
Using technologies such as metal additive manufacturing through laser 3D printing, we’re designing complex, 3D fusion reactor components that are resilient in the extreme fusion reactor environment. We’re leveraging AI to accelerate this research, testing and development as well as nuclear testing facilities such as our Ion Beam Lab and the UW Nuclear Reactor.
And as we begin designing fusion systems, we’ll tap our own leading experts in engineering systems—people like Industrial Engineering Professor Kaibo Liu.
Partnerships with leading companies such as:
Our facilities
Walk the length of our engineering campus, and you’ll pass by a rare constellation of large-scale nuclear experimental facilities.
The UW Nuclear Reactor, located in our Mechanical Engineering Building, is a research-and-teaching tool that prepares future nuclear professionals and connects us to local industry.
First, there’s the twisting Helically Symmetric eXperiment, visible through the windows of Engineering Hall. It’s one of the world’s first optimized stellarators, one type of fusion reactor.
The Ion Beam Laboratory, a U.S. DOE Nuclear Science User Facility that’s also in the Engineering Research Building, allows researchers to put materials to the test against radiation damage.
Then there’s Pegasus-III in the basement of our Engineering Research Building. A donut-shaped fusion reactor called a tokamak, the device allows researchers to test different methods of starting and sustaining plasmas.
The Thermal Hydraulics Laboratory, led by Professor Mark Anderson and located in the Mechanical Engineering Building, contains equipment for testing a whole range of reactor coolants.
“There aren’t many universities with both a nuclear reactor and an accelerator lab on campus,” says Assistant Professor Charles Hirst, who joined UW-Madison in fall 2024 after earning his PhD from MIT and completing a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Michigan.
These and other College of Engineering experimental facilities also integrate into a second-to-none campus network of fusion science facilities. Among them, the Madison Symmetric Torus, the Big Red Ball and the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror Project, or WHAM, housed in the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory in the UW-Madison Department of Physics—where we also collaborate regularly.
Startup Culture
Located about 30 minutes from campus, WHAM is the result of a collaboration among physics and nuclear engineering and engineering physics faculty. It’s now led to a public-private partnership with Realta Fusion, a startup that counts Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics Assistant Professor Ben Lindley among its co-founders.
First plasma marks major milestone in UW–Madison fusion energy research
A fusion device at the University of Wisconsin–Madison generated plasma for the first time Monday, opening a door to making the highly anticipated, carbon-free energy source a reality. Over the…
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Two UW-Madison-based fusion energy spinoffs, Realta Fusion and Type One Energy, are among an elite group of eight nationally selected for funding under the U.S. Department of Energy milestone public-private partnership program.
And then there’s SHINE Technologies, a company founded by three-time College of Engineering alumnus Greg Piefer (BS ’99, MS ’04, PhD ’06) that’s part of the growing fusion ecosystem in southern Wisconsin. One of Shine’s subsidiaries, Phoenix, offers neutron imaging services while helping develop fusion technology.
is centered around a magnetic mirror machine design enabled by high-temperature superconductor magnets developed by MIT spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems. It’s earned financial support from the U.S. Department of Energy, significant investments from Khosla Ventures and Titletown Tech, and an expanded series A raise of $36 million with new investors.
founded by longtime professors David Anderson and Chris Hegna, based on their work with HSX, has also drawn funding from DOE along with tens of millions of dollars of seed investments from firms worldwide.
In addition to using fusion technology for industrial testing and producing valuable medical isotopes, SHINE is eyeing its own commercial fusion energy path.
UW-Madison also is the founding university partner in the recently launched Great Lakes Fusion Energy Alliance, formed with the 5 Lakes Institute to bring the economic benefits of a burgeoning fusion landscape into Wisconsin, the Midwest, and the nation.
Future nuclear workforce
To build and operate an expanded nuclear energy infrastructure—and plan next-generation facilities—we’ll need engineers who have been prepared to work with emerging technologies.
Our students learn to weigh the economic and sociological considerations around nuclear energy, have opportunities to operate our university’s nuclear reactor and work on research on one of our large-scale experiments. Before being crowned Miss America 2023, Grace Stanke (BS ’23) used her experience as an undergraduate researcher with the HSX fusion reactor to cement her decision to study nuclear engineering. She’s been a visible and vocal advocate for nuclear energy ever since.
“It allowed me to participate in cutting-edge research as a freshman and showed me how nuclear technology is evolving and being used right now,” says Stanke, who’s now a nuclear fuels engineer and clean energy advocate at Constellation Energy. “It opened my eyes to the capabilities of the nuclear industry and how it can benefit society.”
And our college is building an extended workforce alliance with Madison College to create a pipeline of technical personnel who will help enable the fusion industry.
In yet another illustration of that impact, many of our alumni are leaders in national labs and at major energy companies across the country and around the globe.
Investing in the future of engineering