D. Phillip (Phil) Harless

Bio

D. Phillip (Phil) Harless joined ORNL's Isotope Processing and Manufacturing Division Operations Support Team in October 2023. 

Phil comes from the Y-12 National Security Complex, where he was the Senior Technical Advisor for the Research & Development Organization (~200 employees, 80+ labs, 4 facilities). He was responsible for: Technical, Process, Operations, and Work-Control problem solving and investigations. Phil created and instructed continuous improvement training courses in Lab-Safety, Work Control, and Conduct of R&D. He also created and instructed the organization’s “What-If” hazard analysis training for Principal Investigators and Operations Safety Board (OSB) members. His technical work during this period focused on design and demonstration of reclamation processes for high value accountable materials from stockpiled inventories.

Before being an Advisor, Phil was the Director of Operations (DOO) for Development, fulfilling the roles and responsibilities of Operations Manager, Shift Technical Advisor, and Shift Manager. He authored “Y-12 Development’s Work Control Manual” and its associated Work Control Forms.  He managed Development’s: Work Control Process, POD, POW, Maintenance Prioritization, and co-chaired the OSB.  The Operations Team Phil led consisted of a: Facilities Manager, Materials/Waste Manager, Security Manager, and Training Manager.

Before DOO, Phil was a Senior Design Engineer responsible for design and demonstration of Uranium and Lithium process equipment, gloveboxes, and process tooling.  Phil patented a dissolution and filtration process to reclaim highly purified Uranium. He designed and deployed a Glovebox pressure control system/“Bubbler”, now manufactured as a catalogue item by an area machine shop.  This bubbler is used on all the Development positive pressure Gloveboxes (>100 units presently in operation).  This bubbler design can also be used for leak detection in negative pressure glovebox applications.

Phil was employed at Y-12 for more than 39 years before taking early retirement and coming to ORNL. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Tennessee (Knoxville), and an associate's degree in mechanical engineering technology from Northeast State University (Blountville).  Phil is a member of Tau Beta Pi and Pi Tau Sigma honorary engineering organizations.