Accelerating Deployment of Next Generation Nuclear Power
Alex J. Huning
Reactor Modeling and Safety Analyst
Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Monday, June 13, 2022
11:30 a.m.
Crowne Plaza Hotel
401 W Summit Hill Drive, Knoxville
Price for lunch is $13 (includes complimentary parking in the hotel garage).
If you choose not to eat, a charge of $7 covers parking and event arrangements.
The hotel now offers its traditional, delicious luncheon buffet again.
The meeting will be called to order at 11:55 a.m.
Decelerating the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere is perhaps the only near-term step that we can take to reduce the likelihood of global temperature rise over the coming decade. Nuclear energy can and should play a role in reducing our carbon output; nuclear energy is already the largest source of effectively emissions-free energy in the US. However the construction of new large-scale nuclear power reactors is costly, with long construction schedules that accumulate years of liabilities before producing any revenues.
A new generation of reactor designers, driven primarily by private capital investment, are working to bring new technologies to market that potentially offer shorter construction cycles and facilitate different approaches for financing. Many of these designs also implement different strategies for fuel utilization, seeking to extract even more energy from available resources or, in some cases, consume fuel that is today considered waste. The Advanced Reactor Engineering and Development Section at Oak Ridge National Laboratory works to develop and qualify vital enabling technologies and accelerate the deployment of these next-generation power stations.
Dr. Huning is a staff member of the Advanced Nuclear System Safety and Licensing Group. His research interests include reactor safety and analysis of accident phenomena, probabilistic risk assessment (PRA), and licensing processes for advanced nuclear systems. For instance, he is serving as the Regulatory Lead for the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR). In this role, he leads a team of experts charged with developing the TCR safety basis and interfacing with design, systems, and I&C teams to ensure consistency, and drive forward both safe and cost-effective solutions.
He is also engaged on many other endeavoring projects which include molten salt reactor safety analysis and design, mechanistic source term, and systems-level modeling and simulation using the Oak Ridge developed suite of Modelica packages, TRANSFORM. Prior to joining ORNL, he was the lead PRA analyst at X-Energy. Alex earned his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2016.
Additional Info
- Presenter name: Alex J. Huning
- Presenter Title: Reactor Modeling and Safety Analyst
- Presenter Affiliation: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- Presentation Title: xx
- Presentation Date: Monday, 13 June 2022