The former head of the Department of Energy’s nuclear energy office is headed to the C-Suite of Westinghouse Electric, the company announced Tuesday.
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. Previously, Baranwal was director of the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) program at Idaho National Laboratory.
The area around the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory has been selected as one of the disadvantaged communities included in President Joe Biden’s “Justice40 Initiative” on climate change, the head of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management Field Office at the New Mexico site said Wednesday.
While the details are yet-to-come, the Justice40 pilot “is a whole-of-government effort to deliver at least 40% of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy to disadvantaged communities,” Michael Mikolanis, the Environmental Management (EM) field office manager, told an online meeting of the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board.
Under this program, agencies are instructed to work with states, tribal governments, including Pueblos, and local communities on federal investments in various environmental efforts including remediation and reduction of legacy pollution, Mikolanis said. He added that Los Alamos is one of only five DOE entities chosen for the program, and the only one under EM.
“President Biden is committed to securing environmental justice and spurring economic opportunity for disadvantaged communities that have been historically marginalized and overburdened by pollution and under-investment,” according to an Office of Management and Budget memo on the program issued last July. Program specifics are still something of “a black box,” Mikolanis acknowledged in response to a question, saying the advisory board would receive more details when available.
