Associate R&D Staff Member - Thermal Hydraulics, Modeling and Simulation

at  Oak Ridge National Laboratory

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

To be considered for this role, you must meet the following basic qualifications:

• Ph.D. in nuclear, mechanical, or chemical engineering or related field.
• At least two years of post-graduate experience in nuclear reactor thermal hydraulics, CFD, and safety analysis.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

The preferred qualifications for this position include:

• Demonstrated proficiency in applying and developing engineering models of nuclear reactor systems for performance and/or safety analysis.
• Strong fundamental understanding of single and multiphase turbulent fluid flow and conjugate heat transfer phenomena.
• Experience in closure model development, model validation, software implementation, and software quality assurance for subchannel method codes.
• Experience with application and extension of standard subchannel thermal hydraulics codes (COBRA, VIPRE, etc.) or with the highly-parallelized sub-channel resolution core simulator CTF.
• Experience with application and extension of the analysis capabilities of industry-standard system thermal hydraulics codes (RELAP, TRACE, TRAC, MELCOR, SAS4A/SASSYS-1, etc.) or with the TRANSFORM dynamic system simulation libraries.
• Experience working in commercial system dynamics simulation tools (Dymola, AMESIM, etc.) and development in the MODELICA language.
• Experience with CFD workflows for simulation of complex flow and heat transfer fields in challenging real-world geometries; familiarity with commercial CFD environments such as STAR-CCM+, ANSYS Workbench, or COMSOL Multiphysics.
• Effectively solve problems and an eagerness to apply these problem-solving skills to various engineering challenges.
• Excellent communication skills (verbal, presentation, and written) to enable effective interaction with technical peers, program managers, and sponsors.

MAIN DUTIES / RESPONSIBILITIES:

As an R&D Associate Staff Member, you will have the following main duties and responsibilities:

• Develop single and multi-phase thermal hydraulic models for steady state and transient analyses in both conventional light water reactors and advanced next-generation designs.
• Create and apply HPC-enabled intermediate fidelity subchannel-resolved thermal hydraulic and fuel performance simulation tools.
• Develop and apply dynamic system simulation tools for nuclear system design, analysis, and optimization.
• Optimize system and component designs for performance and safety.
• Complete thorough verification, validation, uncertainty quantification, and documentation of analysis results.
• Serve as a Principal Investigator for single investigator and small team projects, pursuing innovations in multi-scale thermal-hydraulics and CFD research to reduce barriers to deploying new nuclear energy technologies.
• Report R&D activities appropriately through journal publications, technical presentations, and reports in a timely and ethical manner.

To be considered for this role, you must meet the following basic qualifications:

• Ph.D. in nuclear, mechanical, or chemical engineering or related field.
• At least two years of post-graduate experience in nuclear reactor thermal hydraulics, CFD, and safety analysis