UMass Lowell has an open-pool, 1-Mega-Watt, nuclear reactor used for investigating advanced reactor technologies and materials that will make nuclear energy cleaner, and safer. The nuclear engineering group is working on the applications of nuclear codes (MCNP, MCNPX, PHITS) to model nuclear systems, control and management of nuclear materials (ORIGEN, HELIOS, NJOY) with a member serving as a Subject Matter Expert to the IAEA and U.S. Department of State on threat assessment of cyber and physical security vulnerability to nuclear and radiological material and facilities and contributing to nuclear security topics on - insider threat, detection of radiological materials outside of regulatory control, nuclear forensics, nuclear materials and accountancy. The group also focuses on modeling of atomic to continuum transport phenomena and validated high-performance computing simulation. The research supports the development of energy technologies using high heat capacity ionic liquids including solar thermal storage, advanced fission reactors and fusion reactors.

• Prof. Sukesh Aghara is a contributor to and editor of the recently-published Oxford Handbook of Nuclear Security, the first major academic publication dedicated to the emerging study of nuclear security. 
• In the summer of 2023, twenty-three students from 16 countries representing all four technical cooperating regions, more than half of which were women, participated in the Intercontinental Nuclear Institute's 7th Annual Session with support from the IAEA. During the third week of the program, participants toured the UMass Lowell open-pool Research Reactor. Read more about the 7th Annual Session of the Intercontinental Nuclear Institute.
• Prof. Stephen Lam’s research applies a combination of fundamental simulation, experiments, and machine learning for accelerating the development of new materials for advanced nuclear energy applications. Active projects include development of machine learning-accelerated simulation methods for molten salt reactors, screening of new materials for nuclear-integrated thermal energy storage systems and developing machine learning-enhanced spectroscopy methods for understanding material structures.