Dr. Braden Goddard, Associate Professor, Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Dept., VCU, will give a talk entitled “Radiation Modeling for Material Accountancy of Advanced Reactors”

February 28, 2025

@10:10 am, 440 Goodwin Hall, Blacksburg (in-person); 6-051, VTRC, Arlington
For remote access, click here to register.

Abstract
Advanced reactors, such as molten salt reactors and pebble bed reactors, have significantly different fuel geometry and composition than traditional light water reactors. These differences create challenges in applying current safeguards and material accountancy techniques to these new fuel forms. Before any of these reactors are built, techniques to assay these fuels must be developed and high-fidelity simulations must be performed to validate the techniques. Dr. Braden Goddard’s research group has multiple research projects investigating how to address these challenges, what techniques appear the most promising, and the radiation simulations being done to evaluate these new techniques. This presentation is a summary of these efforts and what techniques appear most promising based on current results.

Bio
Dr. Braden Goddard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University. In his current position he teaches courses, performs research, and oversees the operations in three different laboratories: the Nuclear Security and Nonproliferation Laboratory, the Radiation Detection and Measurements Laboratory, and the Environmental Radionuclide Assay Laboratory. He has 12 years of domestic and international professional experiences in industry, national laboratories, and academia. His work is focused on the topics of nuclear security, and nonproliferation. He has multiple years of teaching experience and has taught 11 different engineering courses spanning introductory undergraduate through the doctoral level. He has advised research projects for 9 Ph.D. students, 6 M.S. students, 36 undergraduate students, 2 postdoc, and 7 research faculty/scientists. His work has been published in 39 journal articles and 100 conference papers/abstracts. He has a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degree in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University and is a Certified Nuclear Security Professional through the World Institute for Nuclear Security. He is also a senior member of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management, serves on the Strategic Planning Committee, Materials Control and Accountability Division, Chapter Relations Committee, and is the founding faculty member for the INMM-VCU student chapter.