South Carolina State opens first-in-state nuclear engineering facility

South Carolina State University celebrated a major milestone with the grand opening of what school officials are calling a very real game-changer right on campus.

A nuclear engineering facility there is the first of its kind in the state and only one of six in the country.

The NuScale Power Energy Exploration Center also known as the E2 center opened officially on Wednesday afternoon in the engineering and computer science building. There are only 11 facilities in the entire world and SC State is the tenth one to have it installed. University President Alexander Conyers expressed how excited he was for the future generation of students in the nuclear engineering program.

“I’m excited that this gets to place our students at such an advantage as the country is experiencing a shortage of skilled workers in the nuclear energy space,” said Conyers.

The E2 Center is a nuclear power simulation plant for students to learn, practice, and apply what they’ve been learning in class to real-world scenarios.

The school partnered with NuScale Power, a Nuclear Power Company, to install the facility and train the next generation of nuclear power engineers to work with NuScale.

One former student, Vanna Gaffney, who is now an engineer in the state, said the new technology and training open up endless opportunities for students when they graduate.

“With Students it gives them the opportunity to be a part of saving the planet, putting more energy back into the grid, and being a part of the solution,” said Gaffney.

Following the ribbon cutting, a lead software engineer with NuScale Power performed a real-life scenario of an earthquake wiping out a power grid in the E2 Center for the public to see how it is done.

In the E2 center students will learn the ins and outs of how NuScale Power operates a system that creates and re-generates non-stop energy.

“So we can be building making energy while people sleep so instead of having to move down renewables or shuffle the grid and potentially waste power we can leave our actors running 100% power while we continue to make green energy,” said NuScale Power Software Engineer, Brandon Pearse.