Welcome! I’m Claudio Delfino. I was a middle school teenager growing up in Europe when the Chernobyl accident happened. I’ve since dedicated my entire engineering studies and career to advance safer nuclear energy applications. I’ve always been aware of the impact of human activities on the environment, sensitive to safety and sustainability aspects of power generation technologies, and I know that improving our use of the world’s energy resources requires a rigorous scientific approach, to include techno-economic analysis, disciplined planning and execution fit to any given social-political context, and the courage to change, continuously innovating toward ever increasing sustainability for generations to come.
Today, my primary focus is driving the development of nuclear technology at sea as the Principal Reactor Systems Engineer with Ocean Atomics. Please research Ocean Atomics for information on how we're taking on the planetary challenge of bringing nuclear energy at sea. I consider being in this amazing team and venture the pinnacle of my professional journey.
In recent years, through my sole-member LLC, Delfino Power Systems (DPS) based in Oregon, I operated as an independent consultant helping clients such as Holtec International, Westinghouse Electric Company, the New York State Energy R&D Authority (NYSERDA), and large global institutional investors to navigate the advanced nuclear energy landscape. Through DPS, I've also developed inventions that are currently in patent-pending status in the US.
I previously worked for Kairos Power (2019-2021), NuScale Power (2013-2018), Constellation Energy (2009-2013) and, earlier in my career, supported work at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the US Department of Energy as a nuclear engineer in a private contracting firm in the Washington DC area (2003-2009).
I have been fortunate to benefit from an extensive academic background in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, over the span of a decade from 1993 to 2003, learning deeply from international luminaries in the nuclear and thermal-hydraulics sciences, and contributing to R&D in the nuclear energy field, first at the University of Genoa, Italy, and then at Penn State. My engineering expertise covers the areas of nuclear systems design and analysis, coupled thermal-hydraulic and neutronic physics, two-phase flows, experimental facilities scaling and testing, nuclear safety and licensing, engineering processes and quality assurance, and techno-economic analysis, including cost control and cost estimating. I apply a systems engineering approach throughout.
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