Three years ago, Mechanical Engineering Professor Miles Greiner got an email from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. They asked if he would be interested in serving on the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB).
The NWTRB is an independent federal agency that reviews the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear waste management activities and provides recommendations to the Secretary of Energy and Congress.
Of course he was interested.
One of Greiner’s areas of expertise is thermal analysis of large, multi-layered nuclear packages, which are used for transporting and storing spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
In September, President Joe Biden appointed Greiner and six others to the NWTRB. The White House announcement cited Greiner’s research as well as the ΒιΆΉΣ³» Nuclear Packaging Research Laboratory that he directs.
“Miles Greiner is very knowledgeable in the area of nuclear packaging,” Engineering Acting Dean Indira Chatterjee said. “He has decades of research experience in this crucial area of nuclear waste management. The College of Engineering is proud that he will be able to work on this issue on a national level.”
Addressing social concerns through engineering
Nuclear power plants provide nearly a fifth of the country’s electricity, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Nuclear energy is carbon-free, which can help alleviate global warming. It also generates spent nuclear fuel — radioactive material that must be carefully managed and stored for the public’s health and safety. And that’s where the NWTRB comes in: it provides objective technical information about spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste management to the DOE, Congress, the White House and other organizations.
“I’m honored to be appointed, and looking forward to working with the board,” Greiner said. “I hope to help the board scientifically and independently review the DOE’s activities on disposal of nuclear waste and highly radioactive materials.”
Greiner earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1986, and joined the Mechanical Engineering (ME) Department at the ΒιΆΉΣ³» that same year. He served as ME department chair between 2012 and 2020. He began working on nuclear packaging in 1993.
“I started working with federal and state agencies, national laboratories and industry,” Greiner said. “It was intriguing to learn how spent fuel could be stored and transported, the federal regulations designed to assure safety, as well as public concerns. The work also gave me an opportunity to use engineering methods to address those concerns.”
His research has been funded by the DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state of ΒιΆΉΣ³». This research led to collaborations with Sandia, Argonne and Pacific Northwest national laboratories, as well as nuclear services company Orano TN.
Greiner expanded his Nuclear Packaging Research Lab in 2013 with the addition of Mechanical Engineering Research Associate Professor Mustafa Hadj-Nacer.
“He has made significant contributions to the field,” Greiner said.
Together with their students, they have performed research to develop and experimentally validate computational methods to predict nuclear packaging temperatures under severe fire accident and normal operating conditions. Greiner and Hadj-Nacer also have worked with the DOE to develop nuclear packaging graduate programs that employ courses at six different national laboratories.
“My knowledge of nuclear waste storage and transport is focused on thermal analysis,” Greiner said. “This is only one aspect of the NWTRB’s multifaceted work. I’m looking forward to broadening my knowledge.”
Longstanding issue
Addressing the country’s nuclear challenges is part of the DOE’s mission, and one formidable debate is what to do with the 90,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel currently stored at more than 70 reactor sites across the country. This past spring, the DOE announced its intent to find a federal, consolidated interim storage facility using a consent-based siting process.
The process no doubt will take time, as the United States has been wrestling with the issue since at least the early 1980s. The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act established the federal government’s responsibility to provide a place for permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
“Something will have to be done,” Greiner said. “I would love to be a part of helping to resolve these long-term complex issues.”
