Fuel Performance Engineer

Oak Ridge, TN | $160K–$180K Base | Relocation Available | Reactor Development

If you’re an experienced fuel-performance or multiphysics engineer looking for greater technical ownership, this role offers the opportunity to directly influence the qualification, safety analysis, and licensing of an advanced High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR) fuel system.

As Fuel Performance Engineer, you’ll own computational modeling and behavioral analysis for the KRONOS fuel architecture, developing the analytical basis used to understand fuel performance across normal operation, anticipated operational occurrences, and accident conditions.

Your work will have a direct path into irradiation testing, fuel qualification, safety limits, and regulatory licensing documentation.

Reporting to the Reactor Fuel Design Manager, you’ll develop and validate high-fidelity models of ceramic matrix TRISO fuel behavior—from individual coated particles through the ceramic matrix and integral fuel pellets.

This is more than a modeling role. You’ll connect computational analysis with irradiation data, post-irradiation examination (PIE), safety testing, manufacturing attributes, fuel failure mechanisms, and uncertainty to establish defensible operating and safety limits for KRONOS.

• Own critical fuel-performance modeling supporting an advanced HTGR program.
• Work across the full analytical scale—from individual TRISO particles to integral fuel pellets.
• Directly connect modeling with irradiation experiments, PIE, safety testing, and fuel qualification.
• Translate technical analysis into operating limits, safety-analysis inputs, and licensing documentation.
• Lead formal Verification & Validation (V&V) and uncertainty quantification for safety-significant computational models.
• Build technical leadership experience while working in a collaborative advanced nuclear engineering environment.

• Develop and execute high-fidelity computational models of fuel behavior at the TRISO particle, ceramic matrix, and integral fuel-pellet levels.
• Perform thermal and mechanical simulations across steady-state operation, anticipated operational occurrences, transients, and accident scenarios.
• Evaluate fuel behavior as peak temperatures approach design limits.
• Translate modeling results into actionable inputs for irradiation experiment planning and fuel qualification.
• Prepare fuel-performance analyses and technical documentation supporting regulatory licensing submissions.
• Lead formal V&V activities for fuel-performance codes such as BISON.
• Establish model applicability, validation metrics, uncertainty treatment, bias, scaling, and acceptance criteria.
• Integrate manufacturing attributes, irradiation conditions, PIE and safety-test results, fuel failure mechanisms, and uncertainty into the qualification model.
• Convert analytical results into defensible operating envelopes, design limits, failure-fraction estimates, source-term inputs, and safety-analysis parameters.
• Maintain modeling workflows, code configuration, behavioral data, and documentation within Siemens Teamcenter in accordance with nuclear QA requirements.

• Degree in Nuclear Engineering, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, or a related highly technical discipline.
• 7+ years of experience in fuel performance, multiphysics, or mechanistic materials modeling.
• Experience providing technical leadership for safety-significant analyses.
• Strong understanding of TRISO-related failure mechanisms, including coated-particle thermochemistry, pressure-vessel failure, irradiation-induced dimensional change, coating degradation, fission-product transport, and…