Senior Neutronics Engineer - Isotope Production
About the role
Senior Neutronics Engineer responsible for neutronics analyses supporting design, optimization, operation, and safety evaluation of an isotope production reactor, collaborating across disciplines and delivering traceable, defensible results.
Responsibilities
- Perform reactor core design and optimization using Monte Carlo and, where appropriate, deterministic neutron transport methods.
- Develop and execute models using codes such as MCNP, Serpent, and SCALE
- Perform core lifecycle and fuel management analyses, including depletion, burnup, reactivity evolution, power distributions, fuel utilization, and operating cycle optimization.
- Evaluate core physics parameters, including excess reactivity, control element worth, shutdown margin, reactivity coefficients, kinetics parameters, and criticality safety margins.
- Design and optimize irradiation targets to meet isotope yield, specific activity, radionuclidic purity, heat limits, and production schedule objectives.
- Perform depletion, activation, decay, and transmutation analyses for fuel, targets, structural materials, experimental hardware, and reactor components.
- Develop neutron and photon source terms for shielding, activation, decay heat, dose, and isotope processing evaluations.
- Perform shielding analyses using variance reduction techniques.
- Apply sensitivity and uncertainty methods using tools such as TSUNAMI and SAMPLER to quantify nuclear data, modeling, and manufacturing uncertainties.
- Establish appropriate biases and uncertainties to establish design margins.
- Develop, qualify, and maintain computational methods, analysis procedures, cross-section libraries, and reference models.
- Perform verification and validation using critical experiments, shielding benchmarks, depletion benchmarks, operating data, and applicable international benchmark programs.
- Support the design and evaluation of startup testing, physics measurements, irradiation experiments, and reactor surveillance activities.
- Couple neutronics results with thermal hydraulic, mechanical, isotope processing, and safety analyses.
- Perform design space exploration and optimization across competing objectives such as isotope production, fuel utilization, power peaking, irradiation damage, cycle length, and safety margin.
- Develop repeatable analysis workflows using modern software development practices, including configuration control, automated testing, code review, and reproducible data processing.
- Provide timely technical feedback to rapidly iterating multidisciplinary design teams.
- Document assumptions, methods, results, uncertainties, and limitations in clear technical reports.
- Support design reviews, safety evaluations, licensing activities, and responses to regulatory questions.
Qualifications
- Bachelors, Masters, or PhD in a technical field such as nuclear engineering with experience in reactor design and analysis (Masters or PhD may be preferable)
- Fluency with Python
- Proficiency with high performance computing systems
- Proficiency with MCNP, SERPENT, or SCALE (TRITON, KENO, SAMPLER, TSUNAMI) is highly recommended
Skills
Benefits
- flexible time off
- equity
- bonuses
- competitive pay
- 401(k)
- health insurance with employer contribution
- HSA
- FSA
- flexible work hours
- wellness credits
About Oklo
Emission free, always on power from advanced fission power plants.
About Oklo Inc.: Oklo Inc. (Oklo) is developing advanced fission power plants to provide emission-free, reliable, and affordable energy. Oklo received a Site Use Permit from the U.S Department of Energy, has performed successful prototypic fuel fabrication, was awarded fuel material from Idaho National Laboratory, developed the first advanced fission combined license application accepted and docketed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and is developing advanced fuel recycling technologies in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy and national laboratories. Oklo has been featured in Time, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Popular Mechanics, Wired, Architectural Digest, Hyperallergic, POWER Magazine, has been the subject of a Harvard Business School case, and is featured in the Oliver Stone documentary Nuclear, among other features.
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