Control education at Penn State began in 1961 when Mortimer Schultz was hired to teach the world's first courses in nuclear reactor control. He authored the first textbook on the subject. Subsequent faculty like Dr. Kenney and Dr. Edwards expanded Penn State's leadership in control education and research. In the 1980s and 90s, Penn State secured major grants to demonstrate advanced digital control technologies at the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II. Faculty and students conducted pioneering work in fault-tolerant control and other areas. While control education and research remained strong through 2012, it was deemphasized after Dr. Edwards' retirement with no replacement hired in that field.

1. A History of Control Education and Research at Penn State
(Revised abstract for NPIC&HMIT 2015 in Charlotte, North Carolina)
Control education at Penn State began when Mortimer Schultz was added to the faculty as a
full-tenured Professor of Nuclear Engineering after he wrote the first book on Nuclear Reactor Control in
1961. He and a colleague had BS degrees in EE during WW II and worked on early radar. After the war
Schultz's colleague would go on to become the first department head of Engineering Science at Penn
State. Schultz chose to work with Rickover in the early development of the nuclear navy. But as often
happened with Rickover, there was a falling-out and Rickover assigned Schultz no duties. Schultz then
wrote the first text book on Nuclear Reactor Control in 1961. Mortimer Schultz taught the first courses
in nuclear reactor control in the world; Dr. Kenney would follow him; followed Dr. Edwards in 1991.
Mr. Edwards obtained an MS degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Wisconsin in
1972 and received a commission in the Army. Mr. Edwards started on a technical rotation program at
General Atomic. The gas crisis of 1974 caused GA to lose all of its orders for large HTGRs. Mr. Edwards
moved back East to take a job at Combustion Engineering in 1976, but Combustion was not faring much
better. Mr. Edwards then obtained a Director of Software Development position at a small company in
State College, LeMont Scientific where entrepreneurship and management were learned, something
entry level engineers are not taught. In 1986, Dr. Klevans became Department Head of Nuclear
Engineering at Penn State upon the retirement of Warren Witzig. Mr. Edwards was Dr. Klevans first hire
as a project associate and afforded the opportunity to pursue a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering.
In 1986 Mr. Edwards worked under Gordon Robinson on the Ultra-Safe Reactor Design through
a large DOE grant submitted by M.A. Schultz. (Schultz had retired after securing the grant and Robinson
took over.) Dr. Kenney obtained an NSF equipment grant for about $100,000 worth of Bailey NETWORK
90 digital control equipment with the justification that it would allow Penn State to demonstrate
advanced controls at EBR-II which had Bailey Equipment on their steam plant. Dr. Klevans then obtained
a large DOE funded project entitled "Intelligent Distributed Control for Nuclear Power Plants ". Fault-
tolerant control was demonstrated on EBR-II using the Bailey Network 90 equipment obtained through
Dr. Kenney's NSF grant. James Turso spent much time at EBR-II working with their personnel to write
and obtain approval to conduct experiments on the steam plant. In parallel, Humberto Garcia worked
with Asok Ray to develop the fault-tolerant control of the EBR-II deaerating feedwater heater using a
Bailey Net90 multifunction controller module. Humberto conducted the experiment at EBR-II from the
control room with their bailey expert Noal Messic carefully watching. Afterwards, James Turso
demonstrated optimal on the Penn State Research Reactor using a Bailey Net90 multifunction controller
based on the Ph.D. dissertation of Dr. Edwards.
Many M.S. and Ph.D. students completed control related work from 1991 through 2012, when
control Education and Research in nuclear engineering was deemphasized administratively and Dr.
Edwards retired (with no control person sought to replace him). The full paper, limited to eight pages,
will discuss as much as possible the most important control research in nuclear engineering conducted
by students from 1991 through 2012.