An Iowa State engineering professor was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB).

Daniel Bullen, associate professor of mechanical engineering, received official notice yesterday that he had been chosen from a field of six candidates to be placed on the board.

The board provides guidance and technical insight to the Department of Energy (DOE).

“It’s a tremendous honor,” Bullen said. “The board has a significant responsibility.”

The 11-member board oversees the DOE on safe shipment, storage and disposal of high-level radioactive waste. One of the board’s primary concerns is determining a site for long-term storage of such wastes, which presents several unprecedented engineering challenges.

Bullen’s particular area of expertise is performance assessment of engineered barrier systems, which will ultimately shield the high-level radioactivity emitted by the wastes.

“My position is actually the nuclear engineering position on the board,” he said.

Bullen had served as a consultant to the group in the past, and has been to several previous meetings. When it came time to choose new members, he said, the National Academy of Sciences solicited and reviewed his resume and those of other potential appointees.

Six names were submitted by the board to the White House, where Clinton made the final decision on the new members.

An ISU faculty member since 1992, Bullen serves as Director of the Nuclear Reactor Laboratory. He has also served as Nuclear Engineering Program Coordinator from 1993-1996.

Bullen said his new appointment will not greatly affect his position at ISU. “I’ll still be a faculty member, and I’ll still teach my courses,” he said.

He added that he’ll just be gone occasionally to attend meetings. There will be four full board meetings a year, plus a number of panel discussions. The board also has to report to the Secretary of Energy and U.S. Congress two times during the year.

Bullen will serve on the board until the year 2000, then he may either remain on the board or be removed, at the discretion of the president.

Dr. James Melsa, dean of the College of Engineering, said he was “very pleased” about Bullen’s appointment.

“He can help to solve real problems that the United States has in areas of nuclear waste,” Melsa said. “We feel that he can continue to bring visibility to the excellent faculty and staff we have in these areas.”

ISU President, Martin Jischke, said in a press release, “This is a very prestigious appointment for Dr. Bullen and shows the national and international reputation he has gained in nuclear engineering.

“As a member of this board, he will help address the very difficult and challenging issues of how we as a nation deal effectively and safely with the by-products of the nuclear energy industry and the dismantling of nuclear weapons,” Jischke said.

Before he came to ISU, Bullen was a faculty member at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. He has also worked in industry and at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.

The NWTRB was created in 1987 by Congress. The board evaluates the scientific and technical validity of DOE activities.

Currently, the board’s main focus is monitoring the DOE as it is planning to create a long-term repository for high-level nuclear waste from both weapons systems and commercial reactors.

The proposed repository would store the wastes for 10,000 years. The goal is to have the repository built by the year 2010. A final site for the project has not been chosen, although initial plans have focused on Yucca Mountain, Nev.