Carnegie Mellon University will offer graduate-level robotics training focused on nuclear waste-handling and disposal jobs, under a new five-year cooperative agreement with the Energy Department worth up to $3 million.
The money will provide a fellowship-like training program for up to 20 doctorate- and masters-level robotics students at the Pittsburgh university’s Robotics Institute, plus money for the institute itself, Deputy Energy Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall said at the university.
In partnership with Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S.C., and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., the trainee program will focus on robotic techniques for DOE cleanup needs, including: environmental remediation; radioactive waste retrieval, treatment, processing, storage, transportation, and disposal; stewardship of spent nuclear fuel and special nuclear materials; nuclear facility and infrastructure operations, maintenance and sustainment; facility/infrastructure deactivation and decommissioning; worker safety; industrial and nuclear facility safety; and other activities related to the handling and management of high-hazard, high-consequence materials and waste, DOE said in a press release.
The traineeship will begin in the fall and be open to students already admitted at that time to an existing robotics program, according a Carnegie Mellon press release.
The cooperative arrangement was competitively awarded, DOE said. The agency did not disclose how many bids it received, but did note the competition was open only to schools that already had graduate-level robotics programs.
