White House reappoints Ewing to nuclear waste review board

Obama Reappoints Ewing to Nuclear Waste Board

The White House has reappointed Rod Ewing, the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at CISAC, as chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.

“Our nation will be greatly served by the talent and expertise these individuals bring to their new roles,” President Barack Obama said in a news release about Ewing and other nominations to key administration posts.

Ewing was first appointed by Obama in 2012 to chair the technical review board, which is responsible for overseeing the Department of Energy activities related to transporting, packaging, storing and disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

The review board is required by law to report its findings, conclusions and recommendation at least twice a year to Congress and the Secretary of Energy.

“The next four years will be very important to the U.S. nuclear waste program as the country addresses a number of fundamental issues – the fate of the accumulating spent nuclear fuel at reactor sites, the need to transport the spent fuel to an interim storage or final repository site, and the need to develop a final disposal site for the spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste,” Ewing said.

Ewing left the University of Michigan last year to join Stanford as Professor of Geological and Environmental Sciences in the School of Earth Sciences and as a Senior Fellow at CISAC. He is the center’s inaugural Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security Studies, an endowed chair established with a $5 million gift from the Stanton Foundation.

“As the country looks to nuclear power as an important contributor to satisfying the energy demands of the country with an essentially carbon-free source of energy, it must address the issues of the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle,” Ewing said.