Nuclear Reactor Design Internships
Idaho National Laboratory University/College Internships-NUCLEAR REACTOR DESIGN INTERNSHIPS.
The Opportunity:
Internships at Idaho National Laboratory
Idaho National Laboratory (INL) hosts over 300 undergraduate and graduate students each year to support INL’s mission. Opportunities for interns at INL range from nuclear engineering to cybersecurity and include non-scientific positions in various operations and business disciplines.
Join INL’s team and find your exceptional educational experience in a real-world work environment. INL offers a unique opportunity to learn, collaborate, innovate and conduct research with top researchers and professionals.
The Deliverables:
Interns will spend the first week of their assignment working with their mentor to outline their work scope and to secure resources for a successful internship. For the next several weeks, the mentor will provide considerable program assistance and guidance to the intern. In addition to regular activities, interns are invited to attend weekly seminars, tours and community events designed with career development in mind. Completion of a final project is highly recommended and can be completed through a variety of mediums – a traditional poster, electronic presentation or video.
The Process:
Through this single application, you are considered for all internship projects related to Nuclear Reactor Design. Simply complete the application questions which will help us identify what knowledge and experience you already have that may be related to the preferred qualifications for each individual internship project. It is common for applicants to receive consideration for multiple projects at varying times throughout the process. Mentors will make direct contact with applicants who meet their project qualifications to share the specific details of the project. On average, INL plans for approximately 300 internships each year. Most internships provide flexibility with start and end dates to account for varying university term schedules. We encourage early applications to increase the number of opportunities available to you.
The Projects:
--Support various aspects of reactor experiment related tasks including: design, thermal analysis, mockup, and fabrication. Reactor experiments consist of small metal capsules that are filled with specimen materials of interest which are then placed in INL’s Advanced Test Reactor. The purpose of the tests is to evaluate the performance of structural and fuel materials after having been bombarded with neutrons over a period of several months or more. The intern will have an opportunity to use cutting edge Abaqus Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software for thermal modeling. The intern is expected to have a working knowledge of 3D CAD software such as Solid Works or Inventor. The intern is expected to have strong oral and written communication skills; as well as mechanical engineering skills in areas such as heat transfer, materials, and machine design.
--This internship will assist in modeling efforts already underway for the United States High Performance Research Reactor (USHPRR) project at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). More specifically, modeling the Design Demonstration Element (DDE) representing several plates of interest present in the fuel elements of the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. HFIR is expected to undergo conversion from highly enriched uranium (HEU) to low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. The geometric complexity of HFIR’s fuel element design is the curves of the outer and inner involute fuel plates. The neutronics analysis software currently used at INL to model experiments irradiated in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) is MCNP. There is no direct surface definition available in MCNP to explicitly model the involute curved plates of the HFIR DDE experiment. Thus, an intern would be tasked with developing methods to approximate the geometry, or possibly explore other radiation transport codes that could be used to directly model the involute fuel plate geometry of this experiment. The end of the summer deliverable is a model (or models) of the HFIR DDE that could be used to evaluate the HFIR DDE experiment for irradiation in ATR, a written report summarizing the work performed, and a presentation to the USHPRR DDE design team.
--The past several high power operating cycles of the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) have proven challenging to meet the power levels required by the associated irradiation experiments’ test objectives. It is standard practice to locate hafnium fixed shims or cobalt rods near fuel elements containing localized power peaks. However, these shim devices are both too grey in terms of suppressing localized power peaks in select ATR fuel plates. Another neutron absorber commonly used in the ATR core, is cadmium. Cadmium baskets are used as a thermal neutron filter for certain capsule experiments. This absorber is too black to reach the locations of interest where power peaks occur. Thus, there is a need to design a power shaping fixed shim specifically for the task of controlling local power peaks from the experiment locations nearest to the fuel locations of interest. It is desirable that the thermal flux depression surrounding this hypothetical absorber be variable in order to be able to control the “reach” from the experiment location to the fuel plate where the power peak occurs. Thus, a system of concentric annuli consisting of different absorber materials in each annulus will be explored. The intern project entails investigating the mean free path of different absorber annuli concepts and the impact on peak power in the adjacent fuel. The intern project will investigate these effects if the absorber annuli system is located in the Hfacility, South Standard Irradiation Facility, LargeA and SmallA positions, and smallB and largeB positions. Design of an ATR power shaping shim will potentially enable the ATR to operate with a higher lobe power, thus enabling more advanced irradiation.
--The summer intern will support neutronics analyses of experiment design studies for the Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) Facility at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The intern will be expected to learn to utilize contemporary neutronics analysis software such as MCNP (Monte Carlo NParticle) to evaluate experiment designs and applications for near and/ or far term concepts to enable in house transient testing capabilities. Computational analyses will be performed on the INL High Performance Computing (HPC) systems and mentored by INL experts familiar with both the engineering tasks and neutronics studies to be performed.
- Have the ability to pass a background check
- Possess a minimum overall 3.0 Grade Point Average (GPA)
- Complete this application, which is used to place students based on their academic interests, coursework, knowledge and communication skills
- Enrolled full time student status at an accredited college or university (undergraduate, graduate, PhD).
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Current resume or Curriculum Vitae (CV)
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Unofficial Transcripts (include current and completed degree programs)
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Current class schedule and number of credits
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Work with your career center to develop a resume or CV that is functional (this is your opportunity for a first impression)
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Review the INL website and learn more about our business and research programs and how they could enrich your degree plan https://www.inl.gov/
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Ask your professors if they have collaborated on INL research programs and seek their permission to list them as a reference
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Review the INL Academic Partnerships web site for valuable information on our internship programs https://www.inl.gov/inl-initiatives/education/
