Bill Barker is a Mechanical Engineer with 35 years of experience in commissioning, startup, operations, and maintenance at nuclear facilities. He has worked in all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle (enrichment, fuel fabrication, operating reactors, spent nuclear fuel, clean-up, and depleted uranium tails).
Bill’s commercial nuclear career included working at the Brunswick Steam Electric Plant and all seven of Duke Energy’s pressurized water reactors. He completed an extensive 17-week Nuclear Operator’s Training and has visited and operated the test reactor at NC State.
His federal experience includes clean-up efforts Hanford’s Spent Nuclear Fuel project at K Basin and two years on the Hanford Senior Advisory Board where he visited all of the Hanford projects and conducted detailed performance assessments in accordance with applicable DOE Orders. He then transitioned to a position in business development with AREVA Framatome before becoming the commissioning manager in the successful startup of the Portsmouth DUF6 plant. He was then assigned Commissioning Manager for AREVA’s planned Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility in Idaho, which was placed into a “lay-up” due to the reduced enriched uranium market.
Bill managed the AREVA Framatome Idaho Falls federal operations office in support of the INL mission. He worked with the BEA senior managers to collaborate with R&D projects related to Light Water Reactor Sustainability, Advanced Test Reactor upgrades, and numerous clean-up and storage projects. Bill personally oversaw the Transient Reactor Test facility restart as a senior advisor for system testing and the DOE Readiness Review. Bill retired from AREVA in 2016.
Bill graduated from North Carolina State University and has worked and lived in North Carolina, Washington, Ohio, and Idaho.