Researcher

 

Sam Bays, Ph.D., is a research and development reactor physicist and engineer at Idaho National Laboratory. 

Dr. Bays is the technical lead for developing and maintaining the nuclear physics analysis codes which are currently being used for fuel reload analysis, safety analysis, and core follow for the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR).

Most of his career has been spent performing the verification and validation of modern computational tools to ensure this tool suite is commercially dedicated as an ASME NQA-1 application for the ATR.  He also developed the training material for performing ATR reactor physics safety analysis using modern tools.  He currently provides independent peer-review of these calculations for each ATR operating cycle.

His primary interest is (re)examining the safety basis for both existing aging reactors and newly proposed reactors in order to develop modern computational solutions to both old and new problems.  He is currently using this motivation to support development of the safety basis for licensing the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) a sodium-cooled fast neutron research reactor intended to be built at INL in the 2020’s.