Michael Dunlevy
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
2018 fellow
Michael is a nuclear-chemical engineer currently serving as the Lead Engineer for nuclear safety oversight activities at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). The DNFSB is an independent agency with the mission of providing nuclear safety oversight over all defense nuclear facilities within the Department of Energy (DOE). Michael has been with the DNFSB providing leadership and technical oversight in a variety of roles for the past decade. In his current position, he is responsible for identifying the need for, and leading the execution of, multiple safety reviews each year for one of the most complicated DOE defense nuclear sites; LANL, which has annual operating budget of approximately $2.4 billion.
Throughout his career, Michael has successfully led teams of engineers and scientists in the performance of safety reviews across the DOE’s defense nuclear complex. As part of these efforts, he has assessed the safety of complicated processes involving uranium, plutonium, and tritium; the storage of transuranic waste; and the assembly, disassembly, and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. As a result, Michael and his teams have identified numerous safety issues, leading the DOE to undertake improvements to public and worker safety while carrying out the missions vital to our national security. He routinely authors technical correspondence on behalf of the DNFSB, leads DNFSB preparations for public hearings, and provides transparency to public entities, stakeholders, and senior federal officials through oral and written products. To expand his knowledge of the processes he is responsible for overseeing, and to gain valuable hands-on experience, he spent one year detailed to the Argonne National Laboratory, where he performed nuclear waste reprocessing experiments.
Prior to joining the DNFSB, Michael was licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate the 1-megawatt Nuclear Research Reactor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Michael earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, his Master of Science degree in Nuclear Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a licensed professional engineer.
