U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), Scholarship and Fellowship Education Grant, Faculty Development Grant, and Trade School and Community College Scholarship Grant, Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 | 31310020K0002

Opportunity Information: Apply for 31310020K0002

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) released this Fiscal Year 2020 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to support education-focused grants that strengthen the nuclear workforce and help the agency evolve into a more modern, risk-informed regulator. The opportunity is structured around multiple education and training pathways, including Scholarship and Fellowship Education Grants, Faculty Development Grants, and Trade School and Community College Scholarship Grants. In practical terms, the NRC is looking for proposals that build talent pipelines (students and skilled trades), improve academic capacity (faculty and programs), and align research and training with regulatory needs in emerging and high-impact technical areas.

This is a discretionary grant program in the Education activity category, listed under CFDA 77.008, with Funding Opportunity Number 31310020K0002. The application closing date in the announcement is May 8, 2020, and the maximum award amount (award ceiling) is $450,000. While the FOA does not clearly state the total number of expected awards in the provided text, it signals competitiveness and an intent to fund projects that directly contribute to NRC-relevant mission outcomes and workforce readiness.

Eligible applicants primarily include institutions of higher education, both public/state-controlled and private. The FOA also explicitly emphasizes broad participation across a range of Minority Serving Institutions and other designated institution types, including Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs), and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AAPIs). This eligibility framing indicates the NRC is not only trying to advance technical capability, but also expand and diversify the pipeline of future nuclear professionals and educators.

The technical and programmatic focus areas listed in the FOA are wide-ranging, but they share a common theme: strengthening the scientific, engineering, analytical, and operational foundations needed for effective regulation of both existing nuclear power plants and advanced reactor technologies. A major emphasis is on advanced non-light water reactors (non-LWRs), including topics such as heat transfer and fluid flow in molten salt and liquid metal coolants, molten-salt chemistry and tritium production, materials compatibility with salts, corrosion tolerance in harsh environments (salt, sodium, high-temperature gas), graphite aging and degradation, and modeling and simulation for microreactors under steady-state and transient conditions. The FOA also highlights health physics and radiation protection modeling tied to advanced reactor operations and siting, reflecting real regulatory questions about dose, exposure pathways, and protective measures for new designs.

Another prominent area is Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), including human reliability analysis, organizational and performance factors, natural hazards risk, common-cause failures, and methods that support risk-informed decision-making. The FOA notes interest in approaches like crediting recovery of failed equipment, alternative strategies to restore safety functions, and methods that justify the use of success paths in regulatory decisions. Fire Risk Analysis is also called out as a separate challenge area, reflecting its importance in plant safety and risk modeling.

The NRC also signals interest in newer, data-driven and technology-enabled regulatory tools. Examples include innovative radiation detection technologies aimed at minimizing groundwater contamination at nuclear power plants, and nuclear-safety-related text mining analytics and blockchain technologies. These topics point to a desire for improved monitoring, data integrity, information management, and analytical methods that can support oversight, compliance, and decision-making.

Core nuclear engineering domains remain central to the FOA, particularly fuels and neutronics. The announcement lists interests such as nuclear data, lattice and core physics, radiation transport, shielding, criticality safety, and sensitivity/uncertainty methods. Specific fuel-related priorities include modeling and performance of accident-tolerant fuels, high-burnup and high-enrichment fuels, accelerated fuel qualification, and modeling and simulation of metallic fuels and TRISO (tristructural isotropic) fuel. This aligns with regulatory needs to evaluate new fuel types, new operating envelopes, and associated safety cases.

Thermal-hydraulics is another major pillar, including two-phase flow and heat transfer, post-critical heat flux phenomena, experimental programs, multi-physics methods, and advanced computation. A particularly detailed subtopic is the development and benchmarking of multiphase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations in reactor fuel bundle geometries, intended to improve modeling of accident scenarios using 3D CFD methods. The FOA also references sub-channel thermal-hydraulics and quantification of code uncertainty, underscoring that regulators need not just models, but validated and uncertainty-aware tools that can stand up in safety evaluations.

On the emergency and consequence side, the FOA highlights consequence analysis and emergency preparedness, including radionuclide dispersion and migration as well as long-term health and economic impacts of severe accidents. Specific interests include benchmarking simplified near-field atmospheric dispersion methods affected by building wakes against state-of-the-art dispersion models, and developing methods to estimate the costs and durations of post-accident cleanup and recovery. These topics reflect the full lifecycle of regulatory planning, from immediate response modeling to longer-term recovery planning and public protection.

Materials engineering appears as a broad, cross-cutting area, including metallurgy, corrosion science, fracture mechanics, advanced manufacturing, modeling, and non-destructive examination. Related to this, the FOA also encourages applications of artificial intelligence and advanced sensors for in-service inspection of reactor components, pointing to modern approaches for condition monitoring, predictive maintenance, and improved inspection effectiveness.

The NRC also identifies natural hazards assessment as a priority, including seismic, flooding, and high-wind hazards, with a specific mention of probabilistic flood hazard assessment. Digital instrumentation and controls is included as well, encompassing systems design, software engineering, and hazards analysis, which are essential for regulating increasingly digital plant systems. Cybersecurity is listed as its own focus area, recognizing the safety and security implications of digital modernization. Finally, the FOA includes characterization, handling, storage, and disposal of nuclear waste streams, including used fuel and waste from various advanced reactor designs, reflecting the regulatory and practical challenges posed by novel fuel cycles and waste forms.

Overall, this FY 2020 NRC education grant FOA is designed to fund academic and training initiatives that produce qualified graduates, support faculty and curriculum capabilities, and advance targeted research and learning in areas that matter to near-term and future nuclear regulation. The emphasis on advanced reactors, risk-informed analysis, modern digital tools, hazards, emergency preparedness, and waste management signals a program intended to keep the regulatory workforce and supporting technical base aligned with the rapidly changing nuclear technology landscape.

• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the education sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), Scholarship and Fellowship Education Grant, Faculty Development Grant, and Trade School and Community College Scholarship Grant, Fiscal Year (FY) 2020" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 77.008.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2020-02-10.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2020-05-08. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $450,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, Others.

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