Celebrating INL Interns

Our interns play a crucial role in advancing groundbreaking research, developing innovative technologies and pushing the boundaries of scientific exploration. Their passion, creativity and dedication are instrumental in driving progress toward a sustainable and resilient energy future.

Idaho National Laboratory is thrilled to welcome over 500 talented students and highlight their incredible achievements. These bright minds actively contribute to our lab's vision to change the world's energy future and secure our nation’s critical infrastructure.

Meet four of our talented interns: Andres Fierro, Katilyn Renoit, Tomas Paganin and Tzu-Yi Chang.

Andres Fierro is working with the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) team in INL’s Collaborative Computer Center. He uses modeling and simulation to research molten salt reactors, a proposed advanced nuclear reactor being pursued by several U.S. companies. His work will deliver a publicly available molten salt reactor experiment model to the National Reactor Innovation Center’s open-source Virtual Test Bed, providing modern modeling software for the research community. Fierro is a senior undergraduate mechanical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin. He is using INL's computational tools for his graduate work modeling the Abilene Christian University Molten Salt Research Reactor.

Katie Renoit works with hot cell engineers at the Materials and Fuels Complex. Hot cells are shielded containment chambers used to inspect spent nuclear fuel and work with other irradiated items. Their job is to find ways to remotely fix components within the hot cells and to create solutions to potential problems. Renoit is a senior at the University of Cincinnati. She studies mechanical engineering with a minor in robotics.

Tomas Paganin is a Ph.D. student at Ohio State University majoring in nuclear engineering. He is working with the Reactor Physics Methods and Analysis group. His work focuses on validating Pronghorn's capabilities for pebble bed reactors. Pronghorn is a multidimensional, coarse-mesh, thermal-hydraulics code for advanced reactors developed by INL using the MOOSE framework. These simulation tools must perform validation tests to compare its results with available real-world benchmarks and assess the code’s accuracy and adequacy. The task of validation is key to give credibility to the Pronghorn code. Paganin was a first-time intern last summer. He is from Porto Alegre, Brazil. He finished his undergraduate and masters in mechanical engineering (with a focus on transport phenomena) at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

Tzu-Yi Chang is working on a nanoindentation creep project with Reactor Structural Materials Examination team at the Materials and Fuels Complex. Creep is a critical material property of structural material and metallic fuel. It involves complicated deformation mechanisms that can shorten the useful life of a material. The team’s goal is to understand these mechanisms and provide insight to the fundamental creep theory. Chang is a Ph.D. student in nuclear engineering at Oregon State University, and this is her second time as an INL intern. She has a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and a master’s in material science from Oregon State University.

About Idaho National Laboratory

Battelle Energy Alliance manages INL for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nation’s center for nuclear energy research and development, and also performs research in each of DOE’s strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment. For more information, visit?www.inl.gov. Follow us on social media:?Twitter,?Facebook,?Instagram?and?LinkedIn.