$1m gift to UNSW boosts nuclear studies

UNSW will expand its nuclear engineering course with the aid of a $1m philanthropic gift, just as demand builds for nuclear expertise.

UNSW offers Australia’s only advanced degee in nuclear engineering.

UNSW will expand its nuclear engineering course with the aid of a $1m philanthropic gift, as demand builds for high-level nuclear expertise to operate and maintain Australia’s planned fleet of nuclear submarines.

The donation, from the Sir William Tyree Foundation, will offer scholarships for about 20 domestic students to enrol in a UNSW master of nuclear engineering degree, the only such qualification of its type available in Australia. It will also fund five PhD students in nuclear engineering and help all the students find work placements.

The donation, which was long planned, was not intended to coincide with last week’s announcement that Australia would acquire nuclear submarines.

But it is timely given that the UNSW degree is Australia’s only postgraduate nuclear engineering course and the submarine project will create large demand for people with that qualification.

Sir William Tyree

“It’s entirely relevant technology and it’s wonderful if people want to come and learn about nuclear engineering,” said Edward Obbard, head of the UNSW nuclear engineering program.

According to Peter Briggs, a retired Royal Australian Navy rear admiral and past president of the Submarine Institute of Australia, a key reason for the long lead time to put nuclear submarines into service is the difficulty of recruiting enough qualified people in Australia, where few people are qualified in nuclear technology.

“The lead time is driven largely by the technical, training and educational preparations and a very significant increase in personnel required to operate and maintain the force,” Mr Briggs wrote in a 2018 paper, Can Australia afford nuclear propelled submarines?, published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

With the help of universities, as well as specialists from the US and the UK, the navy will need to train the highly qualified officers who operate shipboard nuclear reactors, as well as build a huge regulatory and safety structure.

Australia will also need to build up and train a separate nuclear regulation authority – separate from the navy – to certify and monitor the operation and maintenance of the nuclear systems in the submarines.

Universities in the UK have made a major contribution to training people for the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet. Former University of Wollongong vice-chancellor Paul Wellings – who headed Lancaster University in England’s northwest from 2002 to 2011 – said Australian universities had a major opportunity, because of their engineering expertise, to play a key role in the submarine project.

In engineering we have seven faculties in the top 100, and in the physical sciences we have nine in the top 150 in the world, as ranked by Times Higher Education, he said.

Professor Wellings said Australian universities had the capacity to develop new courses to train nuclear personnel, but he pointed out that engineering and science courses had seen a fall in per student public funding in the university funding changes introduced by the federal government last year.

“There might need to be supplementary discussions (with the government) about funding and building centres of excellence,” he said.

University of Notre Dame vice-chancellor Frances Campbell, a former British diplomat and private secretary to prime minister Tony Blair when he was in office, said the submarine project also opened the opportunity for Australian universities to work with US and UK universities on nuclear issues.

“I imagine that in the next year or 18 months, as people look at the feasibility (of the project) there will be lot of enhanced co-operation,” he said.

The $1m gift to UNSW from the Tyree Foundation reflects the interests of engineer and businessman Sir William Tyree.

“My father believed strongly in the benefits of nuclear energy as a safe, clean power source for Australia and our gift continues to support that vision,” said Robyn Fennell, Sir William Tyree’s daughter and chair of the Tyree Foundation board.

The master of nuclear engineering degree at UNSW commenced in 2014 supported by an earlier gift from the Tyree Foundation.