The Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (SNSE) was founded in April 2006. It is a sub-school in the School of Mechanical Engineering and has developed from the former Department of Nuclear Engineering, which was founded in 1958.

Its research fields include nuclear thermal-hydraulics, advanced safety analysis and simulation, methodology of core design, nuclear fuel management and optimization, nuclear material corrosion, chemical separation of spent fuel and waste management, and assessment of nuclear pollution control and radiation protection.

The School has been rapidly developed its scientific research with a wide spectrum of research subjects and a growing research team. Light water-cooled reactor (LWR) technology has been defined as one of her major research directions in the future. Beside the technology of the existing LWR and the advanced LWR reactors, efforts are also being made on the research and development of supercritical waster-cooled reactors (SCWR). At present, SNSE is leading the Chinese SCWR Technical Working Group.