Dr. Kristy Spencer is an advanced reactor spent fuel analyst in the Used Fuel Management Department at INL. In this role, she provides technical support for spent fuel storage, transportation, and disposition for advanced reactor designs. Spencer’s focus area is the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment between INL, Southern Company, and TerraPower, in which she serves on the integrated product team, on the engineering analysis team, and as one of the INL leads for the primary project objectives. Spencer also develops optimization algorithms to select used fuel assemblies for dry cask storage in support of the STANDARDS 5.0 spent nuclear fuel data and analysis tool, formerly known as UNF-ST&DARDS.

Prior to joining INL in 2021, Dr. Spencer was a qualified criticality analyst in the Nuclear Criticality Safety Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). During her time at LANL, she led the development of the Los Alamos Benchmark Suite in collaboration with the MCNP and Nuclear Data groups. Spencer received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University, and her graduate work was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows Program, the Philanthropic Education Organization Jane Hines Scholar award, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory GO! Program. She also spent a year working with the FAST reactor group at the Paul Scherrer Institute as a Fulbright Fellow from 2010 to 2011. Spencer is currently the Communications Committee chair for U.S. Women in Nuclear.

Used nuclear fuel management, advanced reactors, nuclear fuel cycles, benchmarks, optimization, sensitivity analysis, and uncertainty quantification