National lab members visit Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies

September 9, 2026

photo: people in the Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies lab

On Thursday, July 2nd, 2026, four members of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque visited The University of New Mexico’s School of Engineering and the Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies (UNM-ISNPS) to learn about existing research capabilities in the areas of design, modeling and secure remote operation and control of walk away safe small and micro modular reactors, and cybersecurity modeling of nuclear power plant digital instrumentation and control systems.

The staff from Sandia joined Associate Research Professor Timothy Schriener and Distinguished and Regents’ Professor Mohamed El-Genk of the UNM-ISNPS during their visit to the ISNPS’s Energy Conversion and Thermal Hydraulics Lab. They discussed and examined past experimental research performed at UNM-ISNPS supporting the proposed power upgrade of SNL’s Annular Core Research Reactor to 4.0 MW(t).

The UNM-ISNPS team presented and demonstrated the recently developed capabilities for secure remote control and transient operation platform of the VSLLIM microreactor. This walkaway safe microreactor design developed at the ISNPS has been licensed by UNM Rainforest Innovation to the Eagle Nuclear Energy for commercial development and deployment. An additively manufactured scale of the VSLLIM microreactor appears in the background of the posted pictures.

During the SNL staff visit, El-Genk and Schriener presented and demonstrated the operation of the developed platform at the UNM ISNPS for investigating false data injection attacks on emulated programmable logic controllers of nuclear reactors. The visitors observed the response of the digital twin model of the VSLLIM microreactor to the simulated cyberattack. This ongoing research includes coupling physics-based digital twin models of nuclear reactors to control systems and developing and demonstrating for the first time in recent history the capabilities needed for the secure remote operation and control of microreactors such as VSLLIM and the training for current and future workforce development.

More information on UNM-ISNPS published research in these topics and others, including reactor thermal hydraulics and safety, nuclear fuel and materials, heat pipes and thermosyphons, and nuclear power and thermal propulsion systems for space exploration and planetary surface power. These and other areas of research expertise at UNM-ISNPS can be found at: https://isnps.unm.edu/publications/topic/.