Yasir Arafat

MARVEL Chief Designer and Project Lead Technical Area Lead, DOE Microreactor Program Microreactor Technical Lead, Nuclear Science & Technology,
Idaho National Laboratory

Yasir Arafat is an accomplished nuclear engineer and a pioneer in microreactor technology who has made significant contributions to the development of advanced reactors. Mr. Arafat has 13 years of experience leading and executing nuclear research and development, primarily in advanced reactors, including designing and developing the Westinghouse AP1000®, Westinghouse SMR, fusion power plant, creating and leading eVinci & DeVinci microreactors at Westinghouse and DOE's MARVEL test microreactor at INL. As the Chief Designer and Project Lead of the MARVEL project, he has played a key role in the creation of the first advanced reactor to be built in the United States in 50 years.

Under his leadership, the MARVEL test microreactor became the first reactor to achieve NEPA compliance through an Environmental Assessment and successfully undergo procurement and construction phases. Yasir is also one of the national Technical Area Leads for the Department of Energy Microreactor Program and serves as the subject matter expert for microreactors at the Nuclear Science and Technology Directorate at Idaho National Laboratory. He is a technical advisor to the Fission Battery Initiative.

Yasir specializes in leading complex engineering projects, reactor design & licensing, model-based systems engineering, advanced manufacturing, thermodynamic process modeling/simulation, agile product development, and innovation strategy. He has developed a novel Agile hardware development process that enabled the rapid development of nuclear reactor systems. He is also skilled in the techno-economic evaluation and led a pioneering effort in collaboration with the automotive industry to generate a microreactor factory manufacturing cost curve based on manufacturing MARVEL's 3800+ parts.

He has been granted 11 patents and three provisional patents in reactor technology, with an additional four patent applications currently under review. Mr. Arafat's contributions to the field of nuclear energy have been critical to the development of advanced reactors and have cemented his reputation as a leading microreactor expert in the industry.