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Rensselaer Nuclear-Energy Pioneer Richard T. Lahey Jr. Receives Two Major Honors
Richard T. Lahey Jr., a pioneer in the field of nuclear reactor technology and safety who is now exploring sonofusion, a new form of nuclear fusion, has been awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Fellowship, one of the most prestigious honors given to senior researchers around the world. In another major honor, Nuclear Engineering & Design journal has published a special edition in recognition of Professor Lahey’s 65th birthday.
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| Photo by Mark McCarty |
With the Alexander von Humboldt fellowship, Lahey will spend a year conducting research at FZK, the German National Nuclear Energy Laboratory, in Karlsruhe, Germany. Although his research will continue on sonofusion, most of his time will be spent working with German scientists on an advanced concept for a nuclear fission reactor.
The special edition of Nuclear Engineering & Design includes keynote lectures delivered at a special symposium in Professor Lahey’s honor on Sept. 25, 2004, and selected papers from the International Symposium on Two-Phase Flow Modeling and Experimentation on Sept. 20-24, 2004, in Pisa, Italy. The symposium and the special edition were organized by Lahey’s former Ph.D. students, Paolo DiMarco, associate professor of engineering at the University of Pisa, and Rusi P. Taleyarkhan, the Ardent Bement Jr. Professor of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University. Taleyarkhan also announced that a new “non-dimensional” number, the Lahey number, LT, is being dedicated to Lahey.
In a review article in the May 2005 issue of IEEE Spectrum, Lahey, Taleyarkhan, and Robert Nigmatulin, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, described their successful efforts to use sound waves to create nuclear fusion in a glass flask. Although much more research is needed if sonofusion reactors are ever to produce usable quantities of power, Lahey says, the process might become a major energy source that operates without the potentially dangerous radioactive waste or decay heat that is produced by nuclear fission reactors. In the article, the authors suggest possible methods for scaling-up the process and making it self-sustaining.
A research team led by Taleyarkhan, Lahey, and Nigmatulin first announced successful sonofusion in the March 2002 issue of Science. Their paper was met with much skepticism in the scientific community. In March 2004, the team members announced in Phys. Rev. E that they had duplicated the results using much more sensitive instrumentation. At least five other research groups are now trying to reproduce the results, and one of them (Xu et al, NE&D, 235, 2005) has recently announced independent confirmation.
Lahey joined the Rensselaer faculty in 1975 and has served as chairman of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Science, president of the Faulty Senate, and dean of Engineering. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Russian Academy of Sciences and is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society and the American Society for Mechanical Engineers. He has received numerous honors, and he consults frequently with industry and government organizations. He has supervised 44 doctoral and 30 master’s students.
Read the press release
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