Natalia Saraeva, formerly the team lead for the Department of Energy’s consent based siting program, is now the community and stakeholder engagement lead at DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy.
Saraeva was the team lead for DOE’s consent based siting program for about one year and took on a new role in October, according to her LinkedIn profile. She appeared in her new role Wednesday for a panel discussion at the American Nuclear Society’s annual winter meeting in Washington.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy did not reply to emailed requests for comment about when Saraeva had changed jobs or why, or who her replacement is.
On Oct. 10, Paul Murray, a former Orano executive, took over as assistant secretary for the Nuclear Energy office’s Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition. The office manages DOE’s consent based siting program.
Before working in the Office of Nuclear Energy, Saraeva spent a year as an advisor at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory near Richland, Wash. Before that she worked for nearly nine years with the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.
Saraeva has a master’s in economics and nuclear security and nonproliferation from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, plus a bachelor of science in nuclear engineering from the institute. She also has a master’s in foreign service and international relations and affairs from Georgetown University.
DOE in April released its new plan of attack for consent based siting, a term that loosely means getting every authority in a territory to agree to store spent nuclear fuel. The term was popularized in 2012 by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, on which Saraeva served as a staffer.
For now, DOE’s consent based siting process is focused on finding a location for a federal interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. The agency is not allowed to build an interim storage facility until it builds a permanent storage facility. The agency also has no plans to build a permanent storage facility at the only congressionally authorized location for one, Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev.
The consent based siting team’s first step is to define what it means to give consent. To help, DOE has spread $26 million among 13 groups who, over two years or so, will define consent and who may give it. As recently as August, DOE was unsure exactly what product this consent based consortia would deliver to the agency. Also at that time, the agency declined to define a host community.
