President Barack Obama has chosen Stephen G. Burns, a 33-year veteran of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who has served as its general council, to be the 16th chairman of the agency starting on Jan. 1.
Burns will replace Chairman Allison Macfarlane, who took over in July 2012, replacing Gregory Jaczko, a controversial chairman who was accused of treating staff members with aggressive behavior and of repeated clashes with fellow NRC commissioners.
Macfarlane has been credited with calming some of the rifts that marked the Jaczko years. She also helped formulate the agency's response to the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami event that devastated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. She is leaving the agency to take a position at George Washington University.
“I am pleased to have been selected to serve as the NRC’s next chairman. It is a great honor to lead the agency to which I dedicated most of my professional career,” said Burns in an agency press release.
Burns thanked Chairman Macfarlane for her service at the agency.
Burns is the second NRC general council to be appointed chairman. The agency's second chairman, Marcus A. Rowden, who was the general counsel for the Atomic Energy Commission, became the new agency’s chairman in 1976.
The NRC Commission is made up of five commissioners, one of whom is designated by the president as chairman. The commission is a collegial body that formulates policies, develops regulations, issues orders and adjudicates legal matters. The NRC commissioners serve five-year terms, with one term expiring every year on June 30. Burns’ term expires in 2019.
Burns received a bachelor's degree, magna *** laude, in 1975 from Colgate University in Hamilton, NY. He received his law degree with honors in 1978 from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he was an editor on the George Washington Law Review.
During his tenure at the NRC, Mr. Burns received the Distinguished Service Award in 2001 and the Presidential Meritorious Executive Rank Award in 1998 and 2008.
He served in various positions at the agency and was its general council from 2009-2012. He also served as the head of legal affairs at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Nuclear Energy Agency.
The OECD is based in Paris and serves as an economic policy research and consulting agency for 34 nations that include most of the world's largest economies.
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What are his positions? He was involved with the Emergency powers shut down of the Yucca Mtn project as general council, etc.
