Senior Core Design Engineer

Overview

At PNNL, our core capabilities are divided among major departments that we refer to as Directorates within the Lab, focused on a specific area of scientific research or other function, with its own leadership team and dedicated budget.

Our Science & Technology directorates include National Security, Earth and Biological Sciences, Physical and Computational Sciences, and Energy and Environment. In addition, we have an Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a Department of Energy, Office of Science user facility housed on the PNNL campus.

The National Security Directorate (NSD) drives science-based, mission-focused solutions to take on complex,real-worldthreats to our nation and the world.

The Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Technologies Division, within the National Security Directorate, works across fundamental science, research and development, and operations to counter emerging national security threats. We focus on discovering signatures and understanding threats by creating materials, methods, and technologies to detect and analyze them. Our researchers deliver the solutions necessary for addressing complex mission challenges, such as explosives detection, biological threat detection, chemical and nuclear forensics, and special nuclear materials.

The Nuclear Engineering Group at PNNL is seeking a nuclear engineer who possesses an understanding of nuclear power plant core design and operations. This position provides expertise to the PNNL Tritium Technology Program (TTP) team and will work directly with the project collaborative partner organization, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) Fuel Engineering Department.

This position is onsite/hybrid in Richland, WA or Chattanooga, TN preferred; however, remote work may be considered

The PNNL Tritium Technology Program provides critical technical leadership for the U.S. national security infrastructure. Established to support the National Nuclear Security Administration, the program acts as the core design authority for producing and managing tritium for national security. The program serves as the design authority for Tritium‑Producing Burnable Absorber Rods (TPBARs) working closely with their partner, TVA, to safely and reliably irradiate TPBARs in Watts Bar Nuclear (WBN) Unit 1 and Unit 2 plants.

The TVA PWR Fuel Engineering department directly supports the reactor core design and reload licensing analysis needs for TVA's PWR fleet, which includes Sequoyah and WBN Unit 1 and Unit 2 plants. The department provides oversight of fuel vendor neutronics, core monitoring, operations data, and safety analysis. It also supports TVA’s mission of maintaining low rates to promote economic development in the Valley by minimizing fuel costs through optimized fuel management.

In addition, the department supports Governance Oversight Execution and Support (GOES) for the PWR fleet Reactor Engineering organizations and performs in-house calculations for refueling outages, including spent fuel pool criticality and decay heat analyses.

Responsibilities to include:

You would be involved in developing nuclear fuel and core designs, performing oversight of vendor fuel design safety limits to support the fuel reload analyses and plant operations. The specific technical responsibilities relate to tritium production in WBN Unit 1 and Unit 2 plants and are as follows:

• Core design development.
• Long term planning and budget evaluations for core designs.
• Evaluating program goals and changes such as loading changes and increasing tritium production.
• Target design inputs confirmation.
• Lead Use Assemblies evaluation including 50.59 and any technical reviews.
• Design initialization meeting support.
• Nuclear operations data review for long term TPBAR decay.
• Trac Works updates for tritium consolidation campaigns.
• Fuel Assembly Transfer Form development for tritium consolidation campaigns.
• Tritium consolidation campaign oversight (onsite, refuel floor).
• Development of corrective action plans.
• Overseeing/benchmarking code predictive capabilities.
• Reviewing and evaluating revised TPBAR cross sections and performing calculations to…