Florida International University (FIU) will receive $20 million in financial assistance from the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to support advanced nuclear cleanup technology, DOE said Friday.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management announced the five-year grant benefitting FIU’s Applied Research Center in a Feb. 27 press release.
The five-year deal that starts Sunday March 1.
The funding will help the Miami-based FIU research center work on ways to improve cleanup of Cold War and Manhattan Project nuclear sites, DOE said. Specifically, it will include research to improve radioactive waste processing, remediation of contaminated soil and groundwater, facility decontamination and decommissioning along with “tailored information” and artificial intelligence technologies, according to the release.
Florida International has worked previously on miniature robots to crawl through pipes at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Former DOE assistant secretary for environmental management during the Barack Obama administration, Inés Triay, heads the Applied Research Center at FIU.