Samuel Bays is a reactor physicist at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). He has more than 15 years of experience designing and analyzing advanced nuclear reactors. Sam's overarching career impacts involve solving the less obvious technical challenges of advanced reactor deployment. His early career explored novel concepts for transuranic waste transmutation. From 2011 - 2020, he was the technical lead for modernizing core reload and safety analysis techniques for the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR). From 2017 - 2021, he was the INL team lead for core design in support of the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR). From 2018 to present, Sam has been a co-principal investigator for several research projects demonstrating how machine learning and artificial intelligence can be used as a tool for material safeguards verification of advanced reactors. In 2020, Sam served on the Mars Transportation Assessment Study (MTAS) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The MTAS study involved the collaboration of multiple department of energy (DOE) national laboratories and NASA centers to estimate the RD&D needs and cost estimates for a manned mission to Mars. Since 2019, Sam has supported multiple advanced reactor projects as an analyst and subject matter expert on topics ranging from reactor shielding to startup physics testing. 

My primary motivation is to seek, understand, and solve the lesser-known minutia technical issues of advanced reactors and the nuclear fuel cycle. Most modern advanced reactor concepts have a history in heritage advanced reactor demonstrations of the mid-20th century. These past reactors solved at least 90% of the technical challenges needed for commercialization. It is my belief that the last 10% of technology maturation requires 80% of the effort. Therefore, I focus my research on those problems for which will likely affect future plant operators and regulators. Examples of this for which I have worked are software quality assurance, safeguards agreement verification, workforce development (i.e., training), reactor and transportation shielding, security of the HALEU supply chain, elevating low-TRL technology through in-pile testing, used fuel storage and eventual recycle.