Former Department of Energy official Dr. Rita Baranwal broke a year of social media silence Wednesday to announce that she is filling a senior position at the Electric Power Research Institute, her new professional home post-Trump administration.
Baranwal joined the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) as the chief nuclear officer and vice president of the think tank’s nuclear energy portfolio, she said in a Tweet. She joined the organization days after her Jan. 8 resignation as assistant secretary at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy.
I took few days off but am 😊 to get back to #EnergyTwitter and #nucleartwitter. Thrilled to be on the @EPRINews team, providing science-based nuclear R&D to more than 80% of the world’s commercial nuclear fleet. https://t.co/6A8Z6NMPOL
— Dr. Rita Baranwal (@RitaB66) January 21, 2021
In this new position at EPRI Baranwal will be “providing science-based nuclear R&D to more than 80% of the world’s commercial nuclear fleet,” she said in her Tweet.
Baranwal has some history in a setting like that. From 2016 to 2019, she was director of the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) program at the Idaho National Laboratory. The program is an incubator for nuclear-energy technologies that the government hopes can be applied commercially.
Meanwhile, EPRI’s nuclear portfolio also has a sizable program dedicated to high-level radioactive waste management and storage. That includes research on “technical issues related to fuel reprocessing.” During her time at DOE, Baranwal was a vocal proponent of spent fuel reprocessing.