Senior Radiochemist Technical Staff

Requisition Id 13658 

Overview:  

We are seeking a Senior Radiochemist technical professional for our world class radioisotope program who will focus on characterizing and managing nuclear material and detection systems. This position resides in the Radiochemical Process Development (RPD) Group in the Radioisotope Science and Technology Division (RSTD), Isotope Science and Engineering Directorate (ISED), at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). As part of our team, you will be supporting the largest radioisotope production and research portfolio within the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science for Isotope R&D and Production, as well as extensive isotope production programs for the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy and National Nuclear Safety Administration, this position will grant you the opportunity to work with rare nuclear materials and ensure the safe and effective execution of nuclear materials processing. The highly accomplished staff within the RSTD use the unique facilities at ORNL, including the High Flux Isotope

 

Reactor (HFIR) and the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center (REDC), to produce a variety of important medical, scientific, and industrial radioisotopes. These include several alpha emitting radioisotopes either deployed or under clinical trial for treatment of cancer (e.g., Ac-225, Ac-227); heavy actinides Bk-249, Es-254, and Fm-257 for fundamental chemistry research and new element discovery; Cf-252 for neutron emitting applications; and Pu-238 for space exploration. The bulk of the work carried out by the RPD resides in the REDC, a category two nuclear facility with glovebox labs and heavily shielded processing hot cells. As a U.S. DOE Office of Science national laboratory, ORNL has an extraordinary 80-year history of solving the nation’s biggest problems. With a dedicated and creative staff of over 6,000 people, ORNL’s decadal vision for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) is to cultivate an environment and practices that foster diversity in ideas and in the people across the organization, as well as to ensure ORNL is recognized as a workplace of choice. These elements are critical for enabling the execution of ORNL’s broader mission to accelerate scientific discoveries and their translation into energy, environment, and security solutions for the nation.

 

Major Duties/Responsibilities: 

• Develop, perform and lead project planning and execution.
• Perform physical manipulation of radioactive materials during chemical and material studies.
• Develop processing work plans for the separation, purification, and preparation of radioisotope products.
• Conduct research and development activities in both fundamental and applied science with the aim to increase efficiency of production or separation technologies and discover novel applications.
• Carry out hands-on radiochemical processing in a benchtop, fume hood, glovebox, or hot cell environment.
• Interact effectively with technical and operations staff to safely execute work within highly regulated facilities.
• Collect and organize data sets utilized in analysis.
• Manage laboratory spaces, including overseeing chemical inventory and equipment hazards analysis.
• Provide imaginative, thorough solutions to a wide range of complex, ambiguous, and/or difficult problems.
• Actively engage in scientific, technical, and engineering collaborations.
• Implement experimental approaches, perform complex measurements to produce high quality data sets, execute the necessary analysis, and interpret experimental results.
• Participate in project reviews, including presenting to internal and external technical review committees.
• Ensure compliance with Nuclear Material Controls and Accountability (NMC&A), Environment, Safety and Health (ES&H) and quality assurance (QA) requirements.
• Prepare reports and technical manuscripts that thoroughly and accurately describe the work completed and lessons learned to preserve knowledge.