Michael Short

The Mesoscale Nuclear Materials group focuses on the trickly, coupled problems hindering carbon-free, baseload energy from being achieved at the pace which we all want. Our motto is “nuclear materials at the speed of thought,” so we develop far faster ways of measuring effects on materials as they happen. This way, advanced fission and fusion power can be introduced within the decade. Our group is heavily collaborative and experimental, with modeling & simulation often providing insight and understanding into what we measure. Mike holds four degrees from MIT, and despite constant & copious travel has never really left the Institute. He is passionate about teaching and hands-on mentoring, believing strongly that if one works hard on the scientist and person in front of you, great science will naturally follow. He also believes that science is the last bastion of diplomacy in an increasingly polarized, fractured world. Alignment^[1]: Chaotic/Good

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_&_Dragons)

• Earll M. Murman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising, 2016
• Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished, 2016
• S. National Science Foundation Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, 2017
• Junior Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2017
• Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow, 2021
• Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2022
• Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising, 2024

AnthroEngineering (Anthropologically-Led Engineering)

We as engineers are very good at finding excellent solutions to the wrong problems. Most startups fail because they create things that no one needs. Unanticipated consequences of technological innovations unnecessarily create winners and losers when thoughtlessly rolled out. Together with Prof. Manduhai Buyandelger in MIT Anthropology, we explore how anthropologists and engineers can and should work together on equal footing, beyond user-centric design, ensuring that technological progress happens to maximize benefit to the maximum number of people, without causing unheard or marginalized people to suffer. To better define this fledgling field, we begin by crafting an equitable energy transition for locales with significant environmental degradation and healthspan disparities. Together with colleagues from the National University of Mongolia, where we are exploring the relationship between people’s livelihoods and energy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to best design a million-person scalable clean energy and decarbonization strategy which improves livelihoods across the board.

Radiation-Affected Corrosion (RAC)

The word “radiation” often connotes “bad news” to the uninitiated. Our conventional intuition would say that radiation damage makes everything worse. However, the more one looks, the more one can find evidence to the contrary, that radiation simply establishes a new equilibrium. In our group at MIT, we have discovered that radiation repeatably slows corrosion in molten fluoride salts at certain conditions. This led us to explore the extent, rates, mechanisms, and limits of how radiation changes corrosion during irradiation, in the same conditions as actual reactors will operate. We believe that more groups should perform these difficult, expensive, and tricky experiments to better emulate the conditions of materials in real nuclear reactors. We currently study radiation-affected corrosion in molten fluoride/chloride salts, liquid metals like lead and lead-bismuth, and are looking to move into whatever new, horribly corrosive media need further study.

In Situ Ion Irradiation (I³) Measurements

Material properties during irradiation define the useful life of components in nuclear reactors. Rather than the cook-then-look strategy often used, in our group we look while we cook at real reactor conditions. This achieves a 1,000,000x increase in data throughput (1,000x dose resolution in 1/1000^th the time), granting unprecedented access to material properties as they evolve. What used to take years to study now takes hours, thanks to our I³ adaptation of the transient grating spectroscopy (TGS) technique pioneered by Alex Maznev and Keith Nelson in the MIT Chemistry department. Using I³TGS, we study changes to thermal transport in ion irradiated layers of materials during irradiation, we discover the ion irradiation conditions necessary to replicate reactor neutron damage, and most of all we uncover the unexpected, kinetic changes to properties as we try new materials, at new conditions, pulsing the ion beam on and off to see what changes.

Signatures of Historical Uranium Enrichment

Nuclear security requires us to “trust, but verify” that special nuclear materials, like enriched uranium, are not diverted to make weapons. Trusting is easy, but verifying is incredibly hard. Past methods have relied on verification of written records, which can be easily falsified. In our group and together with Prof. Scott Kemp, we are developing a posteriori measurable physical signatures of historical uranium enrichment on materials used in centrifuges. The miniscule amounts of radiation damage incurred by the inner walls of centrifuge equipment, like dark magic, leave traces that it was there. We employ the recently developed technique of nanocalorimetry to verify both the amount of uranium that flowed through centrifuge materials, as well as set bounds on its enrichment. With these signatures together, and assuming physical access to an enrichment facility, this work seeks to increase accountancy of uranium enrichment, and ensure that no more nuclear weapons are made.

Nuclear Materials for the Fusion Supply Chain

Nuclear fusion on a commercial scale could realistically come to pass in this decade. However, the difference between a working fusion power plant and an economical one is the longevity of its components. These components, like just about everything, tend to be made out of materials. We specifically study the effects of radiation damage, corrosion, stress, thermal cycling, and all of these combined for the understudied components in the soon-to-be fusion supply chain. A power plant will fail when its weakest link fails. From ensuring that ceramics remain insulating in radiation fields, to measuring darkening of optical fibers and lenses, to new vanadium alloys for vacuum vessels, to surveying the useful limits of polymers in fusion power plants, we work on materials for diagnostics, heating & current drive, plasma facing materials, and seemingly mundane bits n’ pieces to ensure that the first fleet of fusion power plants is economically viable.