{"id":41593,"date":"2025-10-22T15:08:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T19:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/?p=41593"},"modified":"2025-10-22T15:09:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T19:09:16","slug":"licensed-to-lead-uf-students-join-elite-ranks-as-nuclear-reactor-operators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/engineering-education\/licensed-to-lead-uf-students-join-elite-ranks-as-nuclear-reactor-operators\/","title":{"rendered":"Licensed to lead, UF students join elite ranks as nuclear reactor operators"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As a first-generation college student from rural Alachua, Florida, Alex Trimble never imagined he would one day operate a nuclear reactor.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in 2025, after years of determination, he earned his reactor operator license through the University of Florida\u2019s training reactor <a href=\"https:\/\/mse.ufl.edu\/research\/facilities\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">(UFTR)<\/a> program, joining a small, elite group of students trained to safely control one of the few university reactors in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Built in 1959 and operating out of the Nuclear Engineering program in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering<\/a>, the UFTR is one of fewer than <a href=\"https:\/\/neup.inl.gov\/infrastructure\/university-research-reactors\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">30 reactors<\/a> still operating in the United States. The college uses the reactor to train students like Trimble in nuclear science and reactor operations, and in lab courses in nuclear engineering, physics, chemistry, geology and environmental engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.ufl.edu\/2025\/10\/uf-students-join-elite-ranks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Read full story at news.ufl.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Built in 1959 and operating out of the Nuclear Engineering program in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, the UF training reactor is one of fewer than 30 reactors still operating in the United States. The college uses the reactor to train students in nuclear science and reactor operations, and in lab courses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":41597,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-templates\/single-sidebar-none.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"featured_post":"off","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[25,59,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engineering-education","category-ne","category-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41593"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41599,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41593\/revisions\/41599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}