Reactor Sharing

Impact & Advantages

• Hands-on activities include:

  • Sponsored site visits and lab sessions for partner institutions

  • Summer workshops for K-12 teachers and outreach to youth organizations 

  • Development of virtual reactor tours and instructional modules based on data from UFTR’s experiments, for use by remote or non-reactor institutions 

• The program also supports outreach events, reactor tours, and curricular modules designed to be integrated into partner institutions’ classrooms and labs. 

Impact & Advantages

• Enables educational institutions without reactors to gain experiential exposure to reactor physics, instrumentation, and nuclear operations

• Enhances collaboration across institutions and strengthens the nuclear education ecosystem in Florida and beyond

• Encourages early interest in nuclear science by reaching K-12 teachers and students

• Provides UF with opportunities to expand its outreach mission and share unique reactor capabilities

• The DOE Reactor Sharing program supports universities that ope. rate research reactors in partnering with institutions (e.g. colleges, K-12 schools) that lack direct access to such facilities, with the goal of expanding nuclear science education and engagement. 

• Through this program we aim to cultivate a diverse, skilled next generation of nuclear scientists and engineers by providing hands-on reactor experience, training, and curricular resources.

• We partner with institutions such as Florida International University (FIU), University of Central Florida (UCF), and the University of Puerto Rico–Mayagüez to host visits, training, and collaborative experiments.