Texas A&M University said Friday it will partner with Consolidated Nuclear Security on workforce and technology development programs at the Pantex weapons assembly plant in Amarillo, Texas.
The partnership, founded under a February memorandum of understanding with the University’s Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), will be based at Pantex’s new John C. Drummond Center, the university said in a press release.
Under the partnership, the university said it might help develop:
- Sensors and instrumentation for blast measurements.
- Augmented and virtual reality training for plant operations.
- Additive manufacturing certification.
- First responder training.
- Workforce development programs such as continuing education courses on cybersecurity, nuclear safety, fire safety, criticality engineering, and data analytics.
The work would focus on A&M personnel helping Pantex’s roughly employees, according to the release.
“The partnership accelerates access for TEES to partner with U.S. Department of Energy employees and researchers housed inside the secured-areas of Pantex Plant,” John Sharp, Texas A&M System chancellor, said in the release.
The release did not say when cooperation between the the university and the company would formally begin.
Consolidated Nuclear Security is a partnership of Bechtel National, Leidos, Orbital ATK, and SOC. It manages Pantex and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
Texas A&M is one of the partners in Triad National Security, which on Nov. 1 assumed management of the NNSA’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The other partners are Battelle and the University of California.
