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Newsletter:  Fall 2004/ Issue 6
New Director, Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation

by Karin Durbin

Tom Shea, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s new Director of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Programs, understands well the continually changing nature of international nonproliferation efforts.

The destructive power of nuclear weapons is unparalleled and nuclear arsenals change the fundamentals of how nations interact. The world is inordinately complex and while a small number of nations still harbor nuclear ambitions, more countries have stopped nuclear weapon programs than the number that have them or are currently pursuing them.

Today’s threats also include nuclear terrorism and encompass not only nuclear weapons, but other nuclear explosives, including one that might be used in suicide missions. And radiological dispersal devices, and sabotage. In the past, nonproliferation efforts in Russia were directed at avoiding conflict through cooperative threat reduction and materials protection, control and accounting, but this focus is also evolving.

Shea hopes that with this evolution will come an expanded role for PNNL and sees the Center for Global Security as playing a key role through its focus on Asia.

Shea comes to PNNL following a diverse and distinguished 24-year career at the International Atomic Energy Agency. While at the IAEA, Shea led the Trilateral Initiative, developing a new IAEA verification system for weapons-origin and other fissile material released from defense programs in the Russian Federation and the United States. Shea served on the United Nations Security Council Panel on disarmament in Iraq in 1999 and later implemented an IAEA investigation of the technical requirements for the verification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He also supervised a group of inspectors responsible for safeguards implementation in Japan, India, Taiwan, Australia, and Indonesia.

Shea’s decision to come to PNNL, made in the midst of a thunderstorm during a vacation to Steamboat Springs, CO, was not an easy one. Shea and his wife had lived in Vienna for 24 years and although he had been a PNNL consultant for two years following his IAEA retirement, his Vienna location was removed from routine DOE and national laboratory interactions. However, it was the challenges and opportunities of this position and his positive experience as a PNNL consultant that ultimately influenced his decision.

Though the majority of his career was spent in Vienna, Shea also worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for four years in Washington D.C. He later took a brief hiatus from nonproliferation to help establish a small business in California.

Shea is a Fellow with the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) and founder and past chairman of the INMM Vienna Chapter. He earned a master of science in nuclear engineering and his doctorate in nuclear science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.