After completing her studies, she interned at Science Applications International Corporation, an engineering consultancy company in Virginia. This was her first professional experience in nuclear technology. She worked at large nuclear sites that were being decommissioned. These were sites that had been around for over 50 years. There was radioactive contamination in the dirt, water, and stored radioactive waste. It was a difficult task to find a way to clean these large sites up and get them back to the condition they were in order to allow people to use the sites for their own purposes instead of leaving them as large industrial areas.
Bradford recognized the importance of this work in protecting workers, the local community, and the environment. She also pursued a masters degree at Johns Hopkins University in environmental engineering in 1995 while she was working. She says that protecting people and the environment is an important part of my work. I believe that all of us, as humans, have a responsibility for ensuring that the environment is not irreversibly damaged. My work has contributed to this.
In 2000, Bradford quit the consulting firm to join the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as an environmental engineer in the decommissioning branch. She says that the transition to this job from the consulting firm seemed natural to her, referring to her experience in government service as a child, with a mother who worked at a seismic fault mapping agency and a father who worked in information technology at Department of Defense. She says that my parents’ work was always very rewarding to me. I used to visit their offices often and could see the positive effects their work had on people. This inspired and motivated me to become a government employee.
Bradford worked 21 years at the US NRC. She started as an environmental engineer and was promoted several times to the position of director of the Division of New and Renewed Licenses. She says that I enjoyed the technical challenges of my job, such as trying to figure out how to apply existing regulations for a new type reactor design you are reviewing that you have never seen before. I also enjoyed the many interactions that we had with the public, to hear their opinions about what we were doing.
Bradford participated in many projects relating to new reactor licensing. She also took part in many international activities, many of them with the IAEA. This included a small modular nuclear reactors regulators forum, which she chaired for a time. She joined IAEA in September to lead the Agencys Division of Nuclear Installation Safety.
