Women@Energy features Sandia’s Elena Kalinina

This month, the Department of Energy’s STEM Rising initiative features a Q&A with Sandia National Laboratories’ Spent Nuclear Fuel Scientist and Engineer Elena Kalinina.

In her role as an expert in Spent Nuclear Fuel transportation and storage, Elena leads an experimental program, whose goal is to collect data that could be used to confirm the technical basis for the safety of spent nuclear fuel during transportation and storage.

Her team recently completed a series of experiments, including an international multi-modal transportation test and 30-cm drop tests quantifying the strain and accelerations fuel ex­­­periences during normal transportation. The team is considering a new project that will address seismic effects on the SNF in dry-storage casks.

Elena has received multiple awards over the course of her career. Her recent awards include: DOE Secretary’s Achievement Award for the multi-modal transportation test (2018), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) award for outstanding technical paper (2019), and a Sandia National Laboratories Employee Recognition Award for Leadership (2020).

View more inspiring stories by women working in #STEM at Sandia National Laboratories and throughout the Department of Energy on the STEM Rising website.