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Tim Williams

MA (Cantab), CEng, FIMMM, 39bhr Consulting (a trading name of 39bhr Limited – UK Company No. 10080836)

Tim Williams was awarded a degree in Materials Science at the University of Cambridge, UK in 1967. He joined Rolls-Royce plc in the same year, retiring from full-time employment with the company in 2010. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. He was awarded the Institute’s Colclough Medal and Prize in 2011 for contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms of irradiation embrittlement in low alloy steels for nuclear reactor pressure vessels (RPVs).

At Rolls-Royce, he initially worked on reactor core materials, and then on the mechanical testing of steels and other materials. From the early 1980s until his retirement from Rolls-Royce, his prime responsibility was for the development of engineering models for the prediction of the toughness of RPV steels through reactor life, and in justifying their use in structural integrity evaluations.

Tim has been actively involved in several international collaborative irradiation damage programmes. These include the European Commission supported, PERFECT and PERFORM60 multiscale physics modelling projects, and the ATR-2 irradiation experiment developed in the USA by the University of California Santa Barbara and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is a past chair of the European AMES (Ageing Materials Evaluation and Studies) network, and of the International Group for Radiation Damage Mechanisms in RPV steels (IGRDM).

Tim continues to work as an independent consultant. In 2014 to 2015 he chaired the International Review Board that advised the FANC on the safety case for the Doel 3 and Tihange 2 nuclear reactors, which had been found to contain hydrogen flakes. From 2015 to 2018 he chaired the International Review Panel that advised ENSI on the safety case for restarting the Beznau 1 RPV that had been found to have large numbers of flaw indications.

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