President Bush has selected Dale Klein, an aide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to be the new chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The White House said on April 27 that Bush planned to nominate Klein to a five-year term as an NRC commissioner and also designate him to be NRC Chairman. The NRC position requires Senate confirmation.

Klein is aide to Rumsfeld for nuclear, chemical and biological programs (Photo Credit: DOD photo by Scott Davis )

If approved, Klein would succeed Nils J. Dias as NRC chairman.

Since November 2001, Klein has been Rumsfeld's assistant for nuclear, chemical and biological programs. His duties include policy and planning for nuclear weapons, including safety and security, as well as chemical weapons demilitarization.

Before coming to the Pentagon, Klein was The University of Texas System's vice chancellor for special engineering programs and a professor in the University of Texas at Austin's mechanical engineering department. He also was executive director and chairman of the Amarillo National Research Center.

He has bachelor's and masters degrees and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri at Columbia.