Bio
Annabelle Le Coq is a Materials Irradiation Testing Engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where she specializes in fuels and materials research for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy.
Since joining ORNL, she has managed and executed hundreds of irradiation experiments in the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), supporting programs that advance nuclear fuels and structural materials for current and next-generation reactors. Such programs include the Advanced Fuels Campaign, the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies program, the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) program, the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, and the Microreactor program. Her expertise spans the full experimental workflow—thermal and neutronic design, capsule fabrication, HFIR operations planning, radiological assessments, hot-cell disassembly, thermometry data analysis, and post-irradiation examination (PIE). She played a central role in establishing ORNL’s MiniFuel platform, which has become a standardized capability for studying fuel performance through separate-effects testing.
Annabelle’s research contributions include advancing understanding of fuel fragmentation, fission gas release, metallic and TRISO fuel behavior, and the irradiation tolerance of novel cladding and moderator materials. She has authored or co-authored more than 80 technical reports and publications, including work on irradiated yttrium hydride moderators that earned recognition as Best Presentation at the HotLab 2025 conference in Buenos Aires. She also serves as Experiment Manager for DOE’s NSUF program.
Her professional service includes leadership in the American Nuclear Society, where she is Chair of the Materials Science and Technology Division. In 2025, she was named to the Knoxville News Sentinel’s “40 Under 40” list in recognition of her technical impact and community leadership.