Holtec, a diversified energy technology company founded in New Jersey 37 years ago, has promoted several executives as part of a leadership reorganization for its new nuclear generation program.
The centerpiece of Holtec’s clean energy technologies, the SMR-160 small modular nuclear reactor, recently completed the confirmatory round of safety evaluations and is now entering the pre-construction, regulatory approval and construction phase. The new executive team has expertise in expedited licensing and construction of nuclear projects and will take over from the previous technology-focused team leaders that advanced the reactor’s safety and constructability features.
Kelly Trice, who has led Holtec Decommissioning International since 2019 as its president, has been promoted to president, Nuclear Generation and Decommissioning. The decommissioning business unit will continue to report to Trice who will have the added responsibility to repower the Palisades plant in Michigan and launch the construction of the first wave of SMR-160 reactors in the United States.
Trice has a proven record in executive management of complex business enterprises with over 30 years of nuclear plant design, construction, operation, and decommissioning experience and oversight of large scale multi-billion-dollar engineering, procurement, and construction programs.
Rich Burroni has been named Holtec’s chief nuclear officer to lead the company’s efforts to ensure regulatory, operational, and environmental compliance in accord with industry norms and standards. An executive with extensive expertise in pressurized water reactors (PWR), Burroni previously served as vice president of Indian Point Energy Center. He succeeds Pierre Oneid, who had been Holtec’s chief nuclear officer for over 15 years.
Justin Hawkins has been promoted from the position of SMR licensing director to managing director of Holtec’s SMR-160 Program. In this new role, he leads the small modular reactor SMR-160’s engineering and licensing organization consisting of 11 enterprise teams. A U.S. Navy veteran who served on fast-attack submarines, Hawkins extensive experience in government and the private sector includes decades as a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission resident inspector at nuclear generating stations in South Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Other company executives who have been engaged in the new nuclear program for a long time have moved to new roles at Holtec. Senior Vice President Pierre Oneid was named corporate senior vice president of Domestic Nuclear Programs, where he will keep the company’s customer base apprised of continuing advances in the SMR program as well as the clean energy storage and high-efficiency solar energy capture technologies being developed by Holtec.
Thomas Marcille, a distinguished nuclear engineer with over 30 years’ experience in nuclear reactor technologies, including leading the development phase of SMR-160 for the past 10 years, is now the vice president of Technical Support reporting to the Senior Vice President of International Projects, Richard Springman, Ph.D., who chairs Holtec’s global client outreach program for clean energy. Marcille will serve as the internal consultant to the SMR-160 program and assist potential customers of SMR-160 with in-depth technical information.
“The climate calamity confronting the world has awakened us to the need to complete and deploy our clean energy technologies on an expedited schedule,” said Holtec CEO Kris Singh, Ph.D. in a news release announcing the leadership realignment.
“The trio of Green Boiler, HI-THERM (concentrated solar plant) and SMR-160 technologies developed by our company is our humble contribution to combat the rising concentration of CO2 in the environment. Our planned development of the Palisades site into a ~1500 MWe energy center, for example, will prevent over 5 million tons of CO2 from being spewed into the environment per year. We and others must make every effort to bend the curve of carbon rise if our planet is to remain a viable habitat for humanity,” Singh said.
Holtec, now headquartered in Juniper, Florida, built a 50-acre, $312 million state-of-the-art Technology Campus in 2017 on the Delaware River in Camden that includes a manufacturing plant configured to incorporate the latest in fabrication machinery and information management software to enable precision manufacturing of large and complex weldments, such as those required to build the SMR-160.
