Brett A Blanchard

Bio

Brett Blanchard has served as Enrichment Systems Engineering Section Head for the Isotope Science and Engineering Directorate's Enrichment Science and Engineering Division since September 2023.

Brett has 23 years of experience designing, fabricating, and testing custom equipment in various nuclear fields, supporting the missions of multiple Department of Energy (DOE) sites and national laboratories. This experience includes more than a decade of creating, mentoring, and leading multidisciplinary design teams as an engineer or technical project manager. As a leader in engineering practice, Brett is responsible for implementing both ISO 9001 and NQA-1 design control processes, developing computer-aided drafting (CAD) configuration management systems, and serving in several design authority positions.  His areas of technical expertise include nuclear confinement, accelerator beamlines, high-speed neutron filters, vacuum systems, cryogenics, and multiple enrichment technologies.

Since 2019, Brett has supported the Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) and Stable Isotope (SI) centrifuge projects at ORNL as a control account manager and design engineer in the Machine Design Engineering Group.  

Prior to coming to ORNL, Brett was a mechanical engineering manager on the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) project, responsible for delivering design outputs for gloveboxes, hoods, and process enclosures. Over a 5-year effort, he led a team of up to 75 mechanical engineers and designers to produce outputs ranging from design basis documents to more than 4,500 build-to-print fabrication drawings. Brett had previously served in engineering and leadership roles with the United States Enrichment Corporation, Global Laser Enrichment, and ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source, for which he worked on developing neutron filters. 

Before that, Brett worked in a variety of interesting jobs, including on an exotic animal farm; as mechanic/operator for heavy equipment; as a wedding and sports photographer; for a nonprofit protecting parrots; and for a gym, among other endeavors. 

Brett holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, with a focus on machine design, from the University of Tennessee. He is a licensed professional engineer in Tennessee.