Laetitia H. Delmau

Lætitia H. Delmau is a radiochemist and Distinguished R&D Staff in the Radioisotope Science and Technology Division of the Isotope Science and Engineering Directorate.

She originally joined ORNL as a postdoctoral researcher in the Chemical Separations Group (CSG) in the Chemical Sciences Division in October of 1997 and was hired in 2000. In 2014, she moved from CSG to the Nuclear Security and Isotope Technology Division. She received her doctoral degree in physical chemistry from the University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg, France, in 1997.

Lætitia currently conducts research on a wide range of projects within the Pu-238, Cf-252 and Pm-147 production programs. She previously worked within the Critical Material Institute and the Fuel Cycle Research and Development Program (STAAR), focusing on separations, solvent extraction or ion exchange. During her many years in CSG, she worked primarily on the Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction system to remove Cs-137 from the high-level waste stored at the Savannah River Site. Her work led to the implementation of the industrial process currently used at that facility.

At ORNL, Lætitia has developed new processes for multiple isotopes, including californium, neptunium/plutonium and promethium – the latter of which made ORNL the sole supplier of Pm-147 worldwide. Delmau has continued to optimize these processes, ultimately producing an extremely high-purity batch of promethium that was used by her colleagues in the Chemical Sciences Division for EXAFS studies – resulting in a paper published in May 2024 in the journal Nature. 

Lætitia received the 2024 Glenn T. Seaborg Actinide Separations Award, recognizing U.S. scientists and engineers who have made outstanding and lasting contributions to the development and application of actinide separations process and methodology. She received the DOE Secretary’s Achievement Awards in 2013 as part of the Salt Waste Disposal Technologies Team, and she was part of the Critical Material Institute and the Fuel Cycle Research and Development Program, or STAAR, focusing on separations, solvent extraction or ion exchange. She received a second DOE Secretary’s Achievement Award in 2022, as part of the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Radioisotope Power Systems Team.   

She is active in several professional organizations and has held offices with the Separation Science and Technology Subdivision of the Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Division of the ACS for more than a decade. She has been newsletter editor and Chair of the Nuclear Chemistry and Technology Division of the ACS. She has written 64 scientific papers published in refereed journals and holds seven patents.

In addition to her doctorate, Lætitia holds a master’s degree in chemical engineering and a post-master’s degree in radiochemistry, both from the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles, or ESPCI, de la ville de Paris.