Thermal-Hydraulics and Safety Analysis Engineer - Isotopes
About the role
Role focused on developing and executing systems-level thermal-hydraulic analyses to support the safety case, design basis, and licensing of Oklo's reactor systems; involves transient modeling, safety-methodology development, and coordination with cross-functional teams.
Responsibilities
- Develop, maintain, and execute systems-level thermal-hydraulic models of reactor and plant behavior using RELAP5 or comparable analysis codes.
- Analyze normal operating conditions, anticipated operational occurrences, design-basis events, and selected beyond-design-basis conditions relevant to the thermal-hydraulic safety case.
- Develop event-specific analysis plans, including initial and boundary conditions, assumptions, acceptance criteria, figures of merit, and treatment of uncertainties.
- Develop and document thermal-hydraulic safety-analysis methods, modeling guidance, and engineering practices appropriate to advanced reactor licensing.
- Establish and justify code, model, and correlation applicability for the physical phenomena and operating regimes being evaluated.
- Perform model verification, validation, sensitivity studies, uncertainty analyses, scaling evaluations, and comparisons with experiments, benchmarks, hand calculations, or higher-fidelity analyses.
- Translate regulatory requirements and safety acceptance criteria into defensible analysis requirements and technical evaluation strategies.
- Prepare high-quality calculation packages, methodology documents, safety-analysis reports, licensing-application content, and responses to regulator questions.
- Evaluate design changes and provide feedback on their effects on transient response, safety margins, system performance, and the licensing basis.
- Collaborate with reactor physics, fuel, controls, mechanical, thermal-hydraulics, safety, and licensing engineers on coupled analyses and interface conditions.
- Develop scripts and automated workflows for model generation, execution, post-processing, regression testing, and configuration control.
- Review safety analyses and models prepared by internal contributors, vendors, and external partners.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree in nuclear, mechanical, chemical, or aerospace engineering, or a closely related technical field.
- Five or more years of relevant experience in reactor thermal-hydraulics, nuclear safety analysis, reactor transient analysis, or a closely related field. Advanced degree may substitute for part of experience.
- Demonstrated experience developing and executing systems-level transient models using RELAP5.
- Strong foundation in heat transfer, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and reactor thermal-hydraulics.
- Experience defining and analyzing reactor transients or accident scenarios, including initial conditions, boundary conditions, equipment response, operator or control actions, and acceptance criteria.
- Experience evaluating the reasonableness and applicability of models, correlations, assumptions, and results rather than treating analysis software as a black box.
- Experience documenting engineering analyses in clear, reviewable technical reports or calculation packages.
- Ability to work independently while collaborating across engineering and licensing disciplines.
- Experience with verification and validation, uncertainty quantification, sensitivity analysis, scaling, bias evaluation, or code applicability assessments.
- Familiarity with experiment design, separate-effects and integral-effects testing, benchmark problems, and use of test data to validate analytical methods.
Skills
Benefits
- flexible time off
- equity
- bonuses
- competitive pay
- 401(k)
- health insurance (with employer contribution)
- HSA
- FSA
- flexible work hours
- wellness credits
- other benefits
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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