Ceramics for Nuclear Applications

Dr. Peng Xu is a Principle Engineer at Westinghouse Electric Company, Columbia, USA. He earned his PhD in materials science and engineering from the University of Florida in 2009 and worked as a postdoc associate at the University of Wisconsin in Madison from 2009 to 2011. He is currently the technical lead for high density fuel and ceramic cladding development as part of the accident tolerant fuel development at Westinghouse. He has more than 12 years' experience in nuclear materials and fuel research and development and is author of over 30 publications including journal articles, conference proceedings, and technical abstracts in these areas, and has filed more than 15 patent applications. He has served on the Nuclear Materials Committees of the Metallurgical Society (TMS) and American Nuclear Society (ANS). He was chair of the executive committee of the Nuclear Science User Facility under the Department of Energy from 2015 to 2016. Dr. Christian Deck is Group Leader of Advanced Materials at General Atomics, in San Diego, USA. He attained his PhD in materials science from the University of California, San Diego between 2004-2009. His areas of expertise are cladding, composites, materials research, mechanical properties and microscopy. Professor Lee has been Co-Director of the Institute of Security Science and Technology (ISST), Chair in Ceramic Science and Engineering, and President of the American Ceramic Society. Previous positions at Imperial include Director of the Centre for Nuclear Engineering, Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Nuclear Energy (with Cambridge and The Open Universities), and Director of the Centre for Advanced Structural Ceramics. He is a member of the Government advisory committee The Nuclear Innovation and Research Advisory Board (NIRAB), the Leverhulme Trust Panel of Advisors, the Royal Academy of Engineering International Activities Committee, and the Scientific and Environmental Advisory Board Tokamak Energy Ltd. He was from Jan 2006 to Sept 2010 Head of the Department of Materials. Bill was Deputy Chair of the Government advisory Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) from 2007-2013, has acted as special advisor nuclear to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee (2013) and is an IAEA Technical Expert. Dr. Simon Middleburgh was appointed Senior Lecturer at the Nuclear Futures Institute in March 2018. His research is focused on developing new nuclear materials, investigating material behaviour in extreme environments (including nuclear and aerospace) and combining materials modelling techniques with experimental methods. Simon is a member of the BWR Hub steering group, encouraging research into boiling water reactors and has represented industry in a number of expert panel groups including: the IAEA ACTOF group tasked with investigating accident tolerant fuels and SCIP III (the Studsvik cladding integrity project). Simon has been part of international research collaborations including NEUP-DOE projects in the USA, MUZIC (a collaborative project investigating corrosion and hydrogen pickup mechanisms in zirconium alloys) and CARAT (consortium of academic researchers investigating accident tolerant fuels). Simon has been on the nuclear advisory committee at the Centre of Nuclear Engineering at Imperial College London and has had visiting academic positions at Imperial College London and KTH, Stockholm during his time working in industry. Dr Michael Rushton was appointed as a Senior Lecturer at Bangor in November 2017. Having previously been employed at Imperial College London in the Centre for Nuclear Engineering. His research interests are in applying atomic scale simulation methods to energy materials with a particular emphasis on nuclear materials such as fuel and wasteforms. Of particular relevance is his work to derive new potential models providing high fidelity atomic descriptions of actinide oxides over wide temperature ranges. In addition by using molecular dynamics and static lattice methods he is considering the interaction between small fission gas bubbles and the lattice of nuclear fuel to improve our understanding of fuel performance under normal and extreme conditions. His work considers both crystalline and amorphous materials and Michael uses a variety of methods (e.g. MD, MC, RMC) to characterise the interfaces between crystals and glasses. In addition to his work on nuclear materials, Michael has published extensively on battery and fuel cell materials and continues to look at using engineered-strains to improve their performance.