Brenden Heidrich

About Brenden Heidrich

Dr. Heidrich is a senior nuclear engineer at the Idaho National Laboratory with a background in irradiation testing of nuclear materials. Currently, he is the Director for the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) program in the Department of Energy – Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE). Dr. Heidrich also held other roles in NSUF, starting with the NSUF Capabilities Scientist, administering the infrastructure management program, which evaluates technology and infrastructure investments for DOE-NE. Later, he took over as the NSUF Chief Irradiation Scientist, managing the various irradiation projects for the NSUF at the Advanced Test Reactor, TREAT, HFIR, MITR, and other research and test reactors worldwide. In parallel with working in the NSUF program, he served as the manager of the Irradiation Testing department in the Nuclear Fuels and Materials Division of INL with a stint as the Post-Irradiation Examination department manager. Before this, he led the In-Pile Instrumentation Initiative for DOE-NE. That program was focused on developing innovative sensors for measuring experiment parameters inside of a reactor core. It is now part of the Advanced Sensors and Instrumentation (ASI) program. Dr. Heidrich is a licensed professional nuclear engineer (PA) with more than twenty years of experience in nuclear reactor and facility operations. Before coming to INL in 2014, he was the Assistant Director at the Radiation Science and Engineering Center, Pennsylvania State University. In addition, while at PSU he taught reactor physics and nuclear security courses and supervised graduate students. Dr. Heidrich served in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear reactor operator on the USS Enterprise from 19••••94.

Experience

1. Director, Nuclear Science User Facilities (Nsuf)

   Idaho National Laboratory

   Dec 2022 — Present · Idaho Falls, ID, US

   Visit us at https://nsuf.inl.gov/The NSUF: Pairing the best minds with the needed capabilityThe Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) offers unparalleled research opportunities for nuclear energy researchers. Users are provided access (at no cost to the researcher) to world class nuclear research facilities, technical expertise from experienced scientists and engineers, and assistance with experiment design, assembly, safety analysis, and examination.For more information, contact n•••@inl.gov.

Education

• Naval Nuclear Power Traning

  Certificate of Completion, Reactor Operator

  1988 — 1990

• Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  2016 MeV School Short Course , Materials Science

  2016 — 2016

• Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  SCALE/ORIGEN Standalone Fuel Depletion, Activation, and Source Term Analysis Course, computer simulation

  2017 — 2017

• Idaho National Laboratory

  2017 MeV School, Reactor Safety

  2017 — 2017

• Penn State University

  M.S., Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering

  1999 — 2003

• Pennsylvania State University

  PhD, Energy and Mineral Engineering

  2007 — 2012

• The Pennsylvania State University

  B.S. 1999, Nuclear Engineering

  1994 — 1999

Skills

• Computational Physics
• Fortran
• Nuclear Engineering
• Decision Analysis
• Technical Writing
• Nuclear
• Proposal Writing
• Numerical Analysis
• Simulation
• Mcnp
• Science
• Monte Carlo Simulation
• Stata
• Engineering
• Cfd
• Research
• Statistics
• Spectroscopy
• Safety Engineering
• Team Leadership
• Matlab
• Minitab
• Reactor
• Python
• Thermodynamics
• Mathematical Modeling
• Experimentation
• Data Analysis
• Heat Transfer
• Mathematica
• Fluid Mechanics
• Simulations
• Fluid Dynamics
• Radiation
• Materials Science
• Energy
• Physics