Bio
Tom Hylton has worked at ORNL for over 40 years, principally at the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center. Tom holds BS and MS degrees in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tennessee – Knoxville.
He has been the lead engineer for many Research and Development projects. Among those were evaluating methodologies for mobilizing and transferring radiological waste sludges and measuring physical properties of slurries with in-line instrumentation. More recently, he led the project to disassemble aged alloy-type neutron source capsules and process the source material to separate the alloy components such that the neutron dose rate was greatly diminished. He has also been the lead engineer on preparing radioactive waste items for dispositioning by solidifying the items in cement matrices.
Tom has developed small-scale systems that have been installed in the hot cells to perform various types of operations. Recently he designed, installed, and directed a project to use a column of monosodium titanate/hydrous titanium oxide microspheres to extract plutonium from a caustic solution of aluminum dejacketing solution. Tom is also currently involved with re-engineering the methodology for dispositioning waste items from the Californium-252 purification and source fabrication facility.