Massimiliano Fratoni is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). He received a Laurea in Nuclear Engineering from Sapienza Università di Roma (Italy), and a MSc and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining the Nuclear Engineering Department at UCB, he held a Research Scientist position at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a faculty position at The Pennsylvania State University. Prof. Fratoni’s main research interests are in sustainable nuclear energy through advanced reactors and advanced fuel cycles that maximize natural resource utilization and minimize nuclear waste. Among other concepts, Prof. Fratoni is actively investigating solid and liquid fuel molten salt reactors, accident tolerant fuels, and fast spectrum systems.
Prof. Fratoni’s research interests are in advanced fuel cycles that maximize natural resource utilization and minimize nuclear waste enabling sustainable nuclear energy. His main focus is on the design and analysis of advanced reactors such as molten salt reactors, fast spectrum reactors, reduced-moderation boiling water reactors, and fluoride-cooled high-temperature reactors. Prof. Fratoni’s group also develops computational methods to support reactor analysis, and in particular multi-physics modeling and uncertainty quantification. Additional research areas include accident tolerant fuel, nuclear fuel cycle analysis, geological repository/far-field criticality, and fusion blanket design.
