Charlotta Sanders

Las Vegas, NV, USA

Dr. Sanders is a nuclear engineering consultant with almost 30 years’ experience in the nuclear industry. Additionally, she is an Associate Research Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Dr. Sanders began her career as a reactor physicist for Studsvik Nuclear, in Sweden, before completing a Post-doctorate at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. From 2002 – 2008, she was a Sr. Nuclear Engineering Specialist and Group Supervisor with BECHTEL SAIC, CO performing nuclear safety evaluations in support of the Yucca Mountain program and its license application.

Since 2008, she has provided consulting support services through her company Sanders Engineering. Since 2008, Dr. Sanders has supported URENCO USA providing technical support of criticality safety and radiation protection/shielding design work, performing radiological and chemical consequence analysis, emergency preparedness hazards assessment, and benchmarked and validated MCNP5 and MCNP6 for radiation transport and criticality safety applications. Dr. Sanders was the initiating, and also contributing author, of the Industry Guidance document on criticality analyses for new fuel vaults and spent nuclear fuel pools (NEI 12-16, Guidance for Performing Criticality Analyses of Fuel Storage at Light-Water Reactor Power Plants). Further, she served as the Technical Lead and Product Line manager of criticality safety related work at Westinghouse for spent fuel pool and new fuel vault storage in support of license amendment requests (10CFR50.68). In 2016, Dr. Sanders was the principal investigator for Entergy’s response to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Generic Letter 2016-01.

Dr. Sanders has served as the liaison between the nuclear industry, representing World Nuclear Association, to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Waste Safety Standards Committee, Radiation Safety Standards Committee and International Radioactive Waste Technical Committee.

Dr. Sanders is a registered licensed professional Nuclear Engineer in both the states of Nevada and Idaho, and is the author of over 60 journal/conference articles (including several U.S. NUREGs). Furthermore, she is the co-author of the Elsevier published book titled “Nuclear Waste Management Strategies – An International Perspective”. Dr. Sanders holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Brigham Young University, a MS in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M, and a ScD. in reactor physics from Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden).

Areas of Expertise

• Advanced reactor waste management
• Community support outreach development
• Core design
• Criticality analyses
• Decommissioning strategies
• Fuel Management
• Interim storage options analysis
• Licensing
• Owner’s engineering support
• Regulatory assistance and support
• Regulatory framework development
• Safety analyses
• SFP criticality analysis
• Site selection evaluation for interim storage, DGR, other disposal
• Waste acceptance criteria development