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Paul W Humrickhouse

Distinguished Scientist, Blanket and Fuel Cycle Group

Dr. Humrickhouse is a Distinguished Scientist in the Blanket and Fuel Cycle program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).  Since joining ORNL in 2021, he has worked on various aspects of the design and analysis of tritium breeding blankets for fusion reactors, including neutronics, thermal hydraulics and heat transfer, and tritium transport.

Prior to joining ORNL, he led the Fusion Safety Program at INL, where his research focused primarily on the development and application of the MELCOR and TMAP codes for safety analysis and tritium transport, the application of these in design studies including ARIES and FNSF as well as to ITER and its Test Blanket Modules, and occasionally on the design, execution, or analysis of tritium or aerosol transport experiments that inform these. He also frequently engaged in synergistic analyses of tritium and radionuclide transport in fission reactors, including high-temperature gas-cooled and molten salt reactors.

He received his PhD in Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics from the University of Wisconsin, where he specialized in the analysis of activated dust transport following a MS focused on neutronics.

Dr. Humrickhouse is a member of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and has served in the ANS Fusion Energy Division as an executive committee member, (2010-2013), secretary (2014-2016), and vice chair (2022-present); on the IEEE Fusion Technology Standing Committee (2015-2020); and on the International Standing Committee for the International Symposium on Fusion Nuclear Technology (2017-present).

He was a participant in FES strategic planning efforts in 2019-2020, first as a member of the program committee for the APS Division of Plasma Physics (APS-DPP) Community Planning Process (CPP), and subsequently as a member of the FESAC Long Range Planning Subcommittee. He received a 2020 DOE FES Early Career Award, which supports his ongoing research and development of integrated multiphysics modeling tools for application to fusion reactor blankets.

He has been a member of the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) since 2021.