Cornelius Beausang

Cornelius Beausang, associate professor and chair of the University of Richmond physics department, has received a $110,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct research that could help explain atomic nuclei and the nuclear processes of the interiors of stars as well as assist with the design of future nuclear reactors.

The grant, Beausang’s third from the Energy Department’s Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) program, covers the first year of an expected three-year, $510,000 grant. His previous grants have totaled $1 million.

Beausang’s project will build on his research during the last six years, including measuring the probability of certain reactions happening when energetic neutrons hit the nuclei of short-lived uranium isotopes and other radioactive elements.

Because isotopes like uranium 237 have very short half-lives, direct measurements of such reactions are impossible or very difficult. Instead, researchers use a surrogate reaction technique — one which produces the same excited nucleus but uses a combination of stable projectiles on a stable target material. Beausang also will use charged particle and gamma ray spectroscopy to measure the excited states of nuclei. 

Along with implications for building new reactors, the aim of the research is to provide enough data “that we never have to test nuclear weapons,” said Beausang. 

The award funds two or three University of Richmond undergraduate students, a graduate student from the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom and a post-doctoral researcher — all of whom will be based at Richmond. It also funds a group led by Deseree Meyer, assistant professor of physics at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. Experiments will be conducted at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in collaboration with scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 

Beausang’s is the only project funded by the DOE’s SSAA program to be based at an undergraduate institution. 

His previous research established the surrogate method, which has created a scientific subfield.