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When did colleges and universities begin offering nuclear engineering degree programs?
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nuclear engineering
Installation of the dome of a containment structure at the Taishan nuclear power plant, Guangdong province, southern China, 2012.
Colleges and universities began establishing academic departments and degree programs for nuclear engineering during the 1950s and 1960s.1
These formal academic programs were preceded in the late 1940s and early 1950s by schools of reactor technology, which were established at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Argonne National Laboratory. These institutions served as the forerunners to university-based education in the field. Early adopters of these degree programs in the United States included North Carolina State University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Michigan.1