The MPEI Department of Nuclear Power Plants turns 60

Abstract

The Department of Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute National Research University Federal State-Financed Educational Institution (MPEI NRU) was founded in 1956 and is the oldest one among those in Europe specializing in nuclear power engineering. Professor T.Kh. Margulova was the founder of the MPEI Department of NPPs and its first head. The Department's main objective since the time of its establishment and till nowadays has been the training of highly skilled specialists in the field of nuclear power engineering and thermal physics. In the initial years of its making, the Department faced difficult challenges. In the 1950s, highly skilled specialists of all levels were already in badly need for the nuclear industry to design, construct, and operate nuclear power plant plants, whereas the Department only had to establish its educational and scientific laboratories, to set up the teaching staff, and to get the necessary handbooks and methodical aids for supporting the educational process. More than 2000 engineers for the Russian nuclear power industry and about 1000 specialists from foreign countries have graduated from the Department since the time of its foundation. At present, the MPEI Department of NPPs is steadily developing in the lines of its educational and research activities. Keeping the succession of its scientific and teaching inheritance, knowledge, and experience is the Department's guiding principle and development strategy that ensure its possessing the basic status and stable authority in the scientific-educational society.