Plenary Lecturers

see Lecturers and Moderators in Panel Discussions

see Keynote Lectures Moderators

Plenary Session Order

see also in alphabetic order

John A. Nakoski (OECD/NEA)

Mr. John A. Nakoski is the Deputy Head of the Division of Nuclear Safety Technology and Regulation at the NEA. He has experience as an inspector and regulator for the U.S. NRC and has extensive international experience. He held leadership roles in the areas of regulatory program development, licensing, PWR systems, rulemaking, license renewal, inspection program development, vendor oversight, and probabilistic risk assessment use in regulatory decision-making.

Plenary Lecture #01: The Importance of Best Estimate Analyses and Modeling for Effective Risk Informed Decision Making

Stephen M. Bajorek (USNRC, USA)

Stephen M. Bajorek is the Senior Technical Advisor for Thermal-Hydraulics at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)in the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, and has over forty years experience in the nuclear industry. He provides guidance for development of the TRACE state-of-the-art thermal-hydraulics code, the BlueCRAB suite of codes for advanced reactor analysis, and the NRC’s thermal-hydraulic test programs including the Rod Bundle Heat Transfer (RBHT) program.
Prior to joining the NRC staff he was a member of the faculty at Kansas State University and has over 15 years of industrial experience with Westinghouse as a code developer and analyst. He has authored or co-authored over 200 publications in areas ranging from boiling and two-phase flow, reactor safety, natural convection, and boiling of multi-component fluids.
Dr. Bajorek received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University, with M.S. and B.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.

Plenary Lecture #02: New and Advanced Reactor Analysis and BEPU

John Zino (GEH, USA)

John Zino is the Chief Consulting Engineer for Advanced Plant Technology at GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy. In this role he is responsible for technical leadership for all GEH high-temperature advanced reactor technologies including Natrium, PRISM, and ARC-100. John has worked for GE’s nuclear business since 1999 in a variety of engineering and technical leadership roles in both BWR and Gen. IV sodium fast reactors.

John received his B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from N.C. State University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Nuclear & Radiological Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. John also holds a faculty appointment as an Associate Teaching Professor in Department of Nuclear Engineering at N.C. State.

Plenary Lecture #03: BEPU Licensing Considerations for BWR and Sodium Fast SMR Applications

Cesar Queral (UPM, Spain)

Ph.D. Physics (1996). Professor of Nuclear Engineering at Technical University of Madrid (UPM) since 1992. He is leading a research group on Nuclear Safety since 1996. He has about 35 years’ experience in the field of nuclear safety and has participated in more than 50 projects related with nuclear safety. Member of the NEA Working Group on Analysis and Management of Accidents (WGAMA) since 2018. Author of more than 60 articles in international scientific journals.

Plenary Lecture #04: Applications of BEPU approaches in industry and academia

Xiao He (USTB, China)

Dr. Xiao He is an associate professor at University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB). He earned his doctorate in computer science from Peking University in 2012. His primary research interests includes verification and validation of numerical simulation programs, model-based system engineering, and programming languages. Dr. He joined the project "Development and Demonstration Application of China Virtual Reactor (CVR)" in 2017, and was responsible for the verification of CVR subsystems.

Plenary Lecture #05: Verification and Validation of the China Virtual Reactor for/with Best Estimation Plus Uncertainty