Who We Are
Register of Members Interests
Robert Pickard (Chair) - Chairman of the Consumers’ Association Which?, former Director-General of the British Nutrition Foundation, Emeritus Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Cardiff, Visiting Professor at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, and Fellow of the Institute of Biology and the Royal Society of Medicine. For the Department of Health and the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, Professor Pickard is also Chairman of the national NGO Forum, which facilitates the interface between government policymakers and 94 NGOs working for health improvements. He is an international authority on the biology of honeybees and pioneered the development of solid-state, neural microbiosensors in the UK.
William Lee (Deputy Chair) - Head of Materials at Imperial College London. He has a Physical Metallurgy BSc from Aston, a DPhil in Radiation Damage Studies from Oxford and has held academic positions in the USA (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland and Ohio State University) and UK notably at Sheffield University where he was Director of BNFLs University Research Alliance on Waste Immobilisation. He has over 300 publications including An Introduction to Nuclear Waste Immobilisation (Elsevier, 2005). He is a member of the International Commission on Glass Technical Committee on Nuclear and Hazardous Waste Vitrification and Chair of the International Ceramic Federation Technical Committee on Ceramics in Nuclear Applications. He is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society and of the Institute of Materials.
David Broughton - a Chartered Engineer and a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Recently retired from UKAEA he worked at Dounreay, Caithness from 1981. He has 26 years experience in professional engineering and management of complex nuclear projects. He was responsible for Dounreay’s major radioactive waste management projects. These included new low level waste disposal facilities, new intermediate level waste encapsulation and storage facilities, the future retrieval of waste from the Dounreay shaft and the current shaft isolation project. He is experienced in both engaging stakeholders in projects that have many options and technical issues to consider, and guiding projects through the regulatory and planning processes.
Margaret Burns (Chair of Health Scotland) - a part-time teaching fellow in the Law Department of the University of Aberdeen. She was a member of the Health and Safety Commission for nine years, representing the public interest and the devolved administrations. As a Commissioner she chaired HSC's Rail Industry Advisory Committee and the Partnership for Health and Safety in Scotland and had particular responsibility for the offshore oil industry and the nuclear industry. In 2003 she was awarded the CBE for services to health and safety. She has extensive experience of working with consumer organisations, such as the Scottish Consumer Council and Consumers' Association, and is presently a member of the National Consumer Council's Advisory Group.
Brian D Clark - Professor of Environmental Management and Planning at Aberdeen University. He is a Board Member of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), Chairman of the North Region Board and the Planning & Finance Committee of SEPA and served on the Committee for Radioactive Waste Management from 2003 to 2007. With forty years experience, he is a specialist in environmental impact assessment (EIA), strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and urban and rural planning. Honoured in 1987 by being made a founder member of UNEP’s Global 500 Award. He is a governor of The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute and was a founder member of the Institute of Environmental Assessment (IEA), now the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) and chairs its Technical Committee.
Mark Dutton - served on the Committee for Radioactive Waste Management from 2003-2007. He has a doctorate in high energy physics and a 38 year career based at the National Nuclear Corporation. Specialising in design and safety case issues associated with radiological protection, nuclear safety and radioactive waste management he continues to work as a nuclear consultant. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Nuclear Engineers, co-author to two Safety Guides published by the International Atomic Energy Agency of the UN and has reviewed the safety of reactors in Iran and Pakistan on behalf of the Agency. He is a member of the Defence Nuclear Safety Committee of the Ministry of Defence and a member of the Presidential Nuclear Safety Committee of Armenia.
Fergus Gibb - Emeritus Professor of Petrology & Geochemistry in the Department of Engineering Materials, University of Sheffield with over 40 years teaching & research experience in mineralogy, petrology and geochemistry and other areas of geoscience. A specialist on igneous intrusions, he is a Former Vice-President of the Mineralogical Society and an Elected Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America. A long-standing research interest in the geological disposal of nuclear wastes has led to over 25 papers on the subject and national and international recognition as an authority on deep borehole disposal. On the strength of the potential strategic importance of this research work, Professor Gibb's post at the University of Sheffield was part-funded for a period by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority but the conduct of the work was, and remains, independent of the NDA and the nuclear industry.
Simon Harley - Professor of Lower Crustal Processes in the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. An international expert on the evolution of continental crust, his research integrates geological mapping with experimental and microanalytical studies of the stabilities of minerals and their behaviour at high temperatures and pressures. He has conducted geological mapping projects in diverse and complex basement areas in Australia, India, Norway, Greenland, Scotland and Antarctica. Professor Harley is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in 2002 was awarded the Imperial Polar Medal in recognition of his contributions to Antarctic Earth Science.
Marion Hill - her early career was at the National Radiological Protection Board (now part of the Health Protection Agency) and most recently a background in consultancy. She has over 30 years’ experience in standards for and assessments of the radiological impact of the nuclear industry on the public and the environment. She specialises in policies, strategies and standards for the management of radioactive wastes and radioactively contaminated land. Her experience includes national and international work on policy and regulatory topics, and environmental impact assessments for nuclear installations in the UK and overseas. She is a member of the Health and Safety Commission’s Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee (NuSAC) and is leader of its regulatory framework task force.
Francis Livens - has held a radiochemistry position at the University of Manchester since 1991. He worked for over 25 years in environmental radioactivity and actinide chemistry, starting his career with the Natural Environment Research Council, where he was involved in the response to the Chernobyl accident. At the University of Manchester, he has worked in many aspects of nuclear fuel cycle research, including effluent treatment, waste immobilisation and actinide chemistry. He was the founding director of the Centre for Radiochemistry Research, established in Manchester in 1999 and is now Academic Director of the Dalton Nuclear Institute and Director of the EPSRC-funded, Manchester/Sheffield Nuclear Fission Doctoral Training Centre. He has acted as an advisor to the nuclear industry both in the UK and overseas.
Leslie Netherton - with over 30 years local government experience, specialised in health and safety, food safety, environmental protection and emergency planning. As Head of Service with Plymouth City Council from 1998-2007 he had responsibility for civil protection, waste management, cemeteries, building control, consumer protection, sustainability and environmental health. As lead Authority officer for the nuclear submarine refitting facility at Devonport Royal Dockyard, he was involved with major planning applications, Discharge Consent consultations, offsite emergency planning and extensive stakeholder engagement. He is Chair of Interim Storage Of Laid Up Submarines (ISOLUS) project Advisory Group and sits on the Ministry of Defence ISOLUS Steering Group. He currently runs an environmental health consultancy company and has been an active member of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.
John Rennilson - with over 37 years experience in local government planning, is a former Director of Planning & Development at the Highland Council. He was County Planning Officer of North Yorkshire County Council (1984-1996) and has extensive experience of planning issues at a strategic level and of balancing development needs with public concerns. An Executive Committee Member of the Scottish Society of Directors of Planning he also chaired the Society from 2000 to 2001.
Lynda Warren - Emeritus Professor of Environmental Law at Aberystwyth University and a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. She has postgraduate degrees in marine biology and law and has pursued an academic career first in biology and latterly in environmental law. She has over 100 academic publications, including a number on radioactive waste management law and policy. Lynda has 15 years experience of radioactive waste management policy. She was a member of CoRWM from 2003 - 2007 and, before that, a member of RWMAC chairing its working group on Dounreay. She is currently a member of SEPA’s Dounreay Particles Advisory Group and an associate of IDM, a consultancy engaged in environmental policy advisor, mainly in the nuclear sector.
Rebecca Lunn - Dr Becky Lunn is a Reader in Civil Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. She has over 15 years of research experience in hydrogeology, with a particular focus on deep flow systems, hydromechanics and the spatial and temporal evolution of rock permeability. Her research experience is highly multi-disciplinary, and she currently collaborates closely with structural geologists, seismologists, mathematicians and more recently, microbiologists, psychologists and statisticians. Current research interests include: development of computer models to simulate changes in rock permeability over time surrounding geological faults, with a view to improving flow predictions for deep radioactive waste disposal and carbon dioxide sequestration; understanding the relationship between subsurface groundwater flow and earthquakes; and exploring public understanding of uncertain science, such as flood prediction, to inform the regulators approach to public information and decision-making.
Andrew Sloan - is a chartered engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Strathclyde. He is a director of the specialist consulting engineering firm Donaldson Associates Ltd. He graduated in geology from the University of Edinburgh and has an MSc in Engineering Geology from the University of Leeds. With over 20 years of experience, he is a specialist in geotechnical engineering with particular emphasis on the development of underground space. He has experience in the management and delivery of technically challenging and complex ground engineering projects in a range of regulated industries. He led the independent technical check of the grouting aspects of the Shaft Isolation Project at Dounreay and has worked on underground engineering projects in North America, Europe, Africa and South East Asia.