David E. Holcomb

Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) Technology Lead

Idaho National Laboratory

David E. Holcomb is currently the molten salt reactor (MSR) technology lead for Idaho National Laboratory and a Battelle distinguished inventor. Dr. Holcomb serves as vice-chair and risk and safety lead of the Generation IV International Forum’s MSR provisional system steering committee, chairs the American Nuclear Society’s working group developing a design safety standard for liquid fueled MSRs (ANS 20.2), and serves as a senior technical advisor to the US-DOE MSR campaign. Dr. Holcomb recently retired from the technical staff of Oak Ridge National Laboratory with 30 years of service. He has previously served as the DOE national technical area lead for MSRs and for instrumentation and controls (I&C) for advanced reactors.

Dr. Holcomb has provided support to the US NRC in a variety of MSR areas including fuel salt qualification and topics beyond guidance documents as well as developing an MSR training course for NRC staff. Dr. Holcomb lead the team applying the phenomenon identification and ranking table (PIRT) methodology to MSRs and the team evaluating potential MSR initiating events.

Dr. Holcomb has served as adjunct faculty at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in the Nuclear Engineering Department since 1995 and is a current member of the nuclear engineering program advisory board for the Ohio State University. He is a member ANS and is a past chair of the Human Factors, Instrumentation, and Controls Division. Dr. Holcomb has served multiple times as the general and technical chair of the annual ORNL-GAIN MSR workshops.