The White House last week announced that nuclear risk management expert Nathan Siu will head up the government’s independent nuclear waste technology auditor, according to a press release.
The Joe Biden administration appointed Siu, who was previously a senior technical adviser in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s risk analysis division, as designated chair of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB), according to the Friday press release.
Siu replaces outgoing NWTRB chair Jean Bahr, whose four-year term on the panel has expired, the Board said in a separate press release Monday.
By law, board members whose terms have expired can continue to serve “until they are reappointed or until their replacements are appointed by the President,” NWTRB said.
Before joining NRC in 1997, Siu was an engineering fellow at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory and an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the White House said. He also worked as an associate consultant at engineering firm Pickard, Lowe, and Garrick, Inc.
Siu received a Bachelor’s degree in energy conversion and utilization, a Master’s in nuclear science and a Ph.D. in nuclear science from the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Biden administration on Friday also named five new members to the NWTRB to fill out the 11-member panel. Among those were materials scientist and MIT professor emeritus Ronald Ballinger and American Chemical Society consultant Teresa Fryberger.
The new board members will assume their roles after they take the oath of office, NWTRB said.
Meanwhile, NWTRB in November named Daniel Ogg as executive director of the organization, a position he had held on an acting basis since September 2021.
NWTRB, formed in 1987, is tasked with ensuring the scientific and technical integrity of nuclear waste disposal, storage and transportation projects undertaken by DOE. The Board has been active in DOE’s ongoing efforts to site a federal spent fuel repository, telling the agency in January that a “long-term political commitment” was necessary to achieve such a goal.
