Abstract
This lecture will discuss Idaho National Laboratory’s mission to, and vision for, accelerating the deployment of AI, research & development, and partnerships that bridge science, engineering, regulation, and industry application. The world is experiencing an energy crisis with rapidly increasing needs and limited supply. The U.S. faces many energy-supply challenges—from access, cost, and infrastructure—as well as dramatic growth in electricity demand driven by hyperscale data centers and electrification. Meeting the nation’s ambitious energy-dominance targets depends on deploying nuclear power to provide the abundant, reliable energy needed to power U.S. prosperity and global competitiveness. Nuclear energy is America’s best opportunity to achieve energy independence, technology dominance, and secure supply chains. Innovation that drives down the cost and increases the speed of nuclear power deployment is imperative to drive economic growth and ensure energy security. The U.S. government recognizes the key role that nuclear must play in our future energy supply. However, there’s a significant gap between the current deployment of nuclear power and the nation’s needs. Expanding nuclear capacity requires accelerating deployment through innovative reactor designs, developing advanced fuels, and establishing sustainable fuel-cycle solutions to address the variety of energy use cases. INL is the nation’s nuclear-energy laboratory, hosting a unique array of intellectual, computational, and physical capabilities for research and for demonstrating and deploying nuclear power systems for commercial, maritime, military, and space applications.
Biography
Dr. Simon M. Pimblott has over 40 years of experience in the field of nuclear energy sciences, working closely with the US Department of Energy and the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Currently, a Laboratory Fellow at INL, Dr Pimblott is the Chief Scientific Officer for the Nuclear Science & Technology Directorate. Prior to joining INL in 2017, he was the Chair Professor in Radiation Chemistry and the founding Director for the Dalton Cumbrian Facility (DCF) at The University of Manchester. The DCF was established to address the engineering decommissioning and scientific challenges associated with the UK nuclear industry, and particularly the Sellafield site. Professionally, Dr Pimblott is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society and of the Royal Society of Chemistry and is the Chair of the Materials Science & Technology Division of the American Nuclear Society. He held the UK Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council's Energy Research Chair in Radiation Chemistry from 2007 to 2012. In 1999, he was the 27th Michael Fry Radiation Research Awardee - the most accomplished radiation scientist under 40 years of age, and in 2011 Dr. Pimblott and the development of the DCF project played a major role in the award of the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education to the Dalton Nuclear Institute for excellence in nuclear energy research and education. He has acted as technical lead for major research programs in areas across the field of nuclear energy research, specifically: fuel performance, management, and disposition; radiation effects in nuclear materials and fuels; LWR chemistry and corrosion processes; chemistry of nuclear reprocessing systems; and radioactive waste management and decommissioning.