In memoriam of our colleague James Sienicki

Message on behalf Gilles Rodriguez, Chris Grandy and GIF colleagues

Dear GIF Members,

It is with great sadness that I learned of the passing of our colleague and friend James Sienicki. 

Dr. James Sienicki joined Argonne National Laboratory in August of 1976 after receiving his PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois. During his years of service, he conducted engineering design and safety analysis research on nuclear reactors, facilities, and other engineering systems to support the development of advanced concepts. He was heavily involved in the development of the advanced energy conversion system called supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle and investigated the system for use in various advanced reactors such as sodium-cooled fast reactors and high temperature gas reactors. In March of 2012, he became the manager of the Innovative Systems group within the Nuclear Engineering division to help lead and develop programs and share his wealth of nuclear power knowledge with others.  

Dr. James Jim Sienicki was simply named Jim by all his colleagues.

Jim was a highly valued contributor to Argonne and the Nuclear Engineering community for over 45 years and will truly be missed. GEN IV member at the early beginning of the Forum, he has always been the US representative and active member of the GEN IV SFR CD&BOP Project management board. Recently, Jim was heavily involved in the design and evaluation of the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) and the assessment of designs for mobile nuclear power plants. In 2020 he assembled the VTR conceptual design report which contributed to DOE achieving the critical design (CD-1) to move the project forward to preliminary design.