Center for Advanced Small Modular and Microreactors

Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station

Our mission is to develop and deploy advanced technologies for safer, reliable, sustainable, clean energy.

Our Goals

The Center for Advanced Small Modular and Microreactors (CASMR) will develop and prove technologies that deliver affordable, reliable, resilient, secure, flexible and sustainable energy. We strive for unparalleled safety and zero-carbon emission clean energy.

The center aims to hasten the development of new and transformative technologies, materials and methods to make nuclear fission more affordable. We will work to deploy nuclear fission rapidly and securely. 

CASMR will develop the best, brightest ideas in research to build a community of innovators. These innovators will work together to create practical solutions to advance many industrial sectors, including space, manufacturing, emergency response and defense.

Core Competencies

Light Water Reactors

  • Gen-II and Gen-III/III+ reactor designs
  • Boiling and condensation
  • Light water reactor accident analysis
  • Light water reactor fuel bundles

Generation IV Reactors

  • Pebble bed and graphite block type reactor
  • Passive heat removal systems
  • Containment response
  • Natural circulation

Advanced Reactors

  • Liquid metal fast reactors (LFR)
  • Gas-cooled fast reactors (GFR)
  • Molten salt reactors (MSR)
  • Small modular reactors (SMR)
  • Micro modular reactors (MMR)

Other Applications

  • Heat and mass transfer
  • Single-phase and multiphase flows
  • Single-phase and two-phase jets
  • Supersonic jet

Collaboration

The Center for Advanced Small Modular and Microreactors is a Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) center. We are well-positioned to conduct research that furthers advanced nuclear reactors’ design, construction and operation. 

Building upon TEES’ vast innovation capabilities, the CASMR supports work across the technology development spectrum. The spectrum ranges from basic materials research to reactor design, manufacturing and deployment. 

We join a diverse group of domestic and international industry and government organizations and laboratories to collaborate on nuclear energy initiatives. Thus, our research aligns with the most pressing needs for decarbonizing the power sector and the broader energy system. 

By encouraging industry engagement, the center serves as an integrated solutions platform. We will enable applied research with an awareness of the practical and market barriers that must be tackled to move technologies from lab to market.

The CASMR will pursue and support new approaches for multidisciplinary nuclear research and development, education and external partnerships. 

Our approaches cross departmental and college boundaries. They address all facets of the energy landscape that connect engineering, sciences, technologies, economics, law and policy decisions. 

The center’s interdisciplinary research program will focus on the nuclear energy of small modular reactors and microreactor technologies important to industry, national laboratories, the Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 

Our engagement with energy end-users will lead to solutions for the use of nuclear-generated energy (heat) from small modular reactors and microreactors. These solutions will meet energy needs for the hydrogen economy, water desalination by nuclear power, and chemical heat processes..

Small modular and micro reactors consist of related technologies and applications of nuclear science, industrial processes, education and training, energy systems, space exploration, and defense.

State-of-the-Art Instrumentation

  • Optical fiber sensors
  • Thermal imaging
  • Laser-based flow visualization
  • Schlieren and shadowgraphy imaging
  • X-ray tomography
  • Chemical analyses
  • Gas composition

Partners and Sponsors

  • Department of Energy 
  • Department of Defense
  • Industry
  • National and International Laboratories
  • National and International Universities
  • Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/ International Atomic Energy Agency

Contact

Dr. Yassin Hassan

Dr. Yassin Hassan, Ph.D., P.E.

  • Director, CASMR
  • University Distinguished Professor
  • Regents Professor
  • L.F. Peterson ’36 Chair II
  • Professor, Nuclear Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University

Email: y-hassan@tamu.edu
Phone: 979-218-4417