Bio
Anthony (Tony) Birri is an R&D staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Anthony has been working at the lab since September 2021.
Anthony focuses his nuclear engineering research on characterization of molten salt properties and developing advanced in-situ sensors for the next generation of advanced nuclear reactors. Anthony's research supports several programs under the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy. Regarding molten salt properties, Anthony collaborates with a team of researchers to perform thermophysical properties of molten salts which are relevant to molten salt reactors. This data, along with a compendium of data collected from other institutions historically, feeds into the Molten Salt Database (MSD), on which Anthony is a co-PI. Also, Anthony has recently started a project in which molten salts are to be irradiated in HFIR, to better understand their chemical progression and interaction with structural materials. Regarding advanced sensors, Anthony supports several projects which are focused on development of radiation-robust sensors, such as optical fibers or self-powered neutron detectors, for monitoring advanced reactors or advanced reactor systems, enabling higher accuracy, higher fidelity data to better assess reactor performance.
Anthony hails from The Ohio State University, at which he completed is PhD in Nuclear Engineering in 2021, titled "The Development of an Optical Fiber Based Gamma Thermometer." During his time at Ohio State, Anthony focused on modeling, designing, fabricating, and testing optically-based sensors intended for high radiation, high temperature environments. Anthony's current research interests still focus on development of optically based sensors for such environments, namely for vibration sensing in nuclear microreactors.