Dr. Thomas Shea

Formerly with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, World Nuclear University and the International Atomic Energy Agency

Dr. Thomas Shea was the Director of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Programs at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), operated by Battelle Memorial Institute for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Prior to joining PNNL, Shea served for 24 years at the International Atomic Energy Agency, where he helped to establish the basic IAEA safeguards implementation parameters and defined safeguards approaches for many complex nuclear facilities. He headed a section of inspectors for 11 years, responsible for safeguards implementation in Japan, India, Taiwan, Australia, and Indonesia. He established the Project Office for the JNFL Rokkasho Reprocessing Facility, and successfully headed a Tripartite Project with the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, regarding safeguards at centrifuge enrichment plants equipped with Russian centrifuges.

During the period from 1996 through 2003, Dr. Shea was Head of the IAEA Trilateral Initiative Office in the Department of Safeguards, responsible for program development and implementation activities associated with a possible new verification role for the IAEA: weapon-origin and other fissile material released from military applications. He also headed IAEA activities related to a fissile material cutoff treaty, publishing a number of articles and briefing delegates to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament on six occasions.

Shea was named to a UN Security Council Panel on disarmament in Iraq in 1999 and carried out an IAEA investigation of the technical requirements for the verification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He wrote the proliferation-resistance and physical protection parts of the U.S. Generation IV Roadmap and lead the IAEA Safeguards Departmental activities related to proliferation resistance.

He recently served a two-year assignment for the U.S. Department of Energy at the World Nuclear University (WNU) in London, where he was director of the WNU Global Nuclear Policy Forum.

Shea was awarded a Special Fellowship from the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and received his Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering and his Doctor of Philosophy in Nuclear Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management.