Obama Nominates Allison Mcfarlane To Chair NRC

Allison Mcfarlane

President Obama nominated George Mason University Professor Allison Macfarlane to serve as chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Allison Macfarlane is an associate professor of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. She is also an affiliate of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

Allison received her PhD in Geology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. She has held fellowships at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the Centre for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University, and the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

From 1998-2000 Allison was a Social Science Research Council - MacArthur Foundation fellow in International Peace and Security. She has served on National Academy of Sciences panels on nuclear energy and nuclear weapons issues.

She is currently a member of the White House’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. She is also chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and serves on the Keystone Centre’s Energy Board.

Her research focuses on environmental policy and international security issues associated with nuclear energy, especially the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. In 2006, MIT Press published her book, Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste, which explores the unresolved technical issues for nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. (The Mark News, The Hill, 5/24/2012)