On February 7, 2018, the Government appointed Richard Sexton as President and CEO of AECL for a term of two years. Richard has been leading AECL as President and CEO on an interim basis for the past year, and previous to that as the Acting Chief Transition Officer for almost a year.
Richard has over 32 years of experience in decommissioning and waste management gained through leadership roles on some of the largest and most complex decommissioning projects in the world, including Magnox and Sellafield in the United Kingdom, and Rocky Flats and the Connecticut Yankee site in the United States. Most recently, Richard served as the Chief Operating Officer for the Magnox Reactor Accelerated Sites, where he was responsible for directing transformational change in decommissioning project strategy, delivery approach, cost, and schedule. Richard also has extensive experience in managing multiple stakeholder relationships.
As President and CEO of AECL, Richard will continue to lead the organization in its oversight role, seeing that the priorities of Government are delivered safely and efficiently under the GoCo model.
Richard holds an M.S. in Radiological Health Engineering from Northwestern University, a B.S. in Chemistry and American Board of Health Physics Certification, Part I. He has published and presented multiple papers on decommissioning and holds two patents for radiation detection equipment.