Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: One lecture / week for 4 weeks, 1.5 hours / session

Labs: One lab session, 1.5 hours / session

Course Structure

The course will have five meetings, for a total of six hours of lecture and one hour of laboratory.

The laboratory session is conducted at the MIT Research Reactor. In this session, students will gain hands-on experience with nuclear reactor operations.

Textbooks

There is no required textbook for this course. Students are expected to read the course notes assigned for each lecture, and consult supplemental readings from the published literature as distributed in class.

Assignments

Students should expect to spend about fifteen hours on homework, consisting of:

  • Three problem sets.
  • One short paper: a short summary and critique of a recent journal article on control of complex systems, or an essay on some aspect of reactor control.

Grading

The course grade is based on attendance, completing the lab and homeworks, and writing a satisfactory paper.