Dr. John C. Wagner is the director of Idaho National Laboratory and president of Battelle Energy Alliance LLC. He is responsible for management and integration of a large, multipurpose laboratory that has a mission focused on nuclear energy, national and homeland security, and energy and environment science and technology. He manages this U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
national laboratory of approximately 6,000 scientists, engineers and support staff members in multiple nuclear and nonnuclear experimental facilities, with an annual budget of more than $2 billion.
Wagner began serving as INL director in 2020. He has more than 25 years of experience performing research, and managing and leading research and development projects, programs and organizations. Wagner initially joined INL as chief scientist at the Materials and Fuels Complex in 2016 and served as associate laboratory director for Nuclear Science and Technology beginning in 2017.
Wagner earned a bachelor’s in nuclear engineering from the Missouri
University of Science and Technology in 1992, and master’s and doctorate degrees from the Pennsylvania State University in 1994 and 1997, respectively. Following graduate school, Wagner joined Holtec International as a principal engineer, performing criticality safety analyses and licensing activities for spent fuel storage pools and storage and transportation casks. Wagner joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a research and development staff member in 1999, performing research in the areas of hybrid (Monte Carlo/deterministic) radiation transport methods, burnup credit criticality safety, and spent nuclear fuel characterization and safety.
While at Oak Ridge, Wagner held various technical leadership positions, including technical lead for postclosure criticality in support of DOE Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management’s Lead Laboratory for Repository
Systems, Radiation Transport Methods Deputy Focus Area lead for the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors, and national technical director of the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy’s Nuclear Fuels Storage and Transportation Planning Project. Wagner held various management positions, including group leader for the Criticality and Shielding Methods and Applications, Radiation Transport, and Used Fuel Systems groups.
In 2014, Wagner became director of the Reactor and Nuclear Systems Division, with responsibility for management direction and leadership to focus and integrate the division’s seven research and development groups (Advanced Reactor Systems and Safety, Nuclear Data and Criticality Safety, Nuclear Security Modeling, Radiation Transport, Reactor Physics, Thermal Hydraulics and Irradiation Engineering, and Used Fuel Systems) and the Radiation Safety Information Computational Center.
Wagner is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and recipient of the 2013 E.O. Lawrence Award. He has authored or co-authored more than 170 refereed journal and conference articles, technical reports, and conference summaries. He was the original developer of the A3MCNP and ADVANTG codes and led the development of the CADIS and Forward-Weighted CADIS hybrid transport methods
