June 20, 2013

President Obama has announced his intent to reappoint Stanford's Rodney Ewing as chair of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. The board performs independent scientific and technical peer review of the Department of Energy's program for managing and disposing of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. Its findings and recommendations are provided to Congress, the secretary of energy and the public.

Ewing has served as board chair since 2012. In 2014, he led a delegation of board members and staff to China to learn about Beijing’s efforts to develop a deep-mined geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste. 

Rodney Ewing (Photo: NWTRB)

Ewing joined Stanford in 2014 and holds two faculty appointments: Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security in the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and professor of geological and environmental sciences in the School of Earth Sciences. 
 
From 1997 to 2013, he held faculty appointments at the University of Michigan in the departments of Materials Science and Engineering, Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, and Geological Sciences. From 1974 to 1997, Ewing held a number of positions at the University of New Mexico, where he is now an emeritus regents' professor. 
 
Ewing has written extensively on issues related to nuclear waste management and is co-editor of Radioactive Waste Forms for the Future (1988) and Uncertainty Underground - Yucca Mountain and the Nation's High-Level Nuclear Waste (2006).
 
His awards and honors include Royal Society of Canada, foreign fellow;  Université Pierre et Marie Curie, honorary doctor; Dana Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America; and Lomonosov Great Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He received a B.S. from Texas Christian University and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford.
 
This article is based on a White House news release from June 13, 2014.