The former head of the Department of Energy’s nuclear energy office is headed to the C-Suite of Westinghouse Electric, the company announced this week.
Rita Baranwal, assistant secretary for DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) from July 2019 to January 2021, was appointed chief technology officer at Westinghouse, according to a press release dated Tuesday. In her role, Baranwal will “lead the company’s global research and development investments and spearhead a technology strategy to advance the company’s innovative nuclear solutions,” the release said.
It’s a kind of homecoming for Baranwal — the former NE chief spent eight years at Westinghouse from 2007 to 2016 managing the company’s fuel engineering, product engineering and technology development subsections.
Most recently, Baranwal was chief nuclear officer at non-government research group the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), which she joined just days after her January 2021 resignation from DOE. During her time at EPRI, the organization renewed an unfunded five-year research agreement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission aimed at addressing the aging U.S. nuclear fleet.
Prior to her time in NE’s big chair, Baranwal was director of the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) program at Idaho National Laboratory.
Baranwal marks another big get for Westinghouse in the nuclear energy space. The company in April brought on former Orano CEO Sam Shakir to head up its environmental services division. Westinghouse said at the time Shakir would oversee the company’s “expansion as a leading services and technology provider in the global commercial and government nuclear decommissioning and management services markets.”
