NNMCAB members elect Dr. Stanley Riveles chair Wednesday during their quarterly meeting at Santa Fe Community College. Photo by Maire O’Neill/ladailypost.com

Dr. Stanley A. Riveles of Taos was elected chair of the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board Wednesday during the board’s meeting at Santa Fe Community College. He takes over in October from Chair Gerard Martinez y Valencia.

Dr. Stanley A. Riveles

Riveles told the Los Alamos Daily Post Thursday that the NNMCAB should not be underestimated as a way to access Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel and obtain information about the Lab’s waste management programs.

“This is a 30-year program and no single NNMCAB chair or board can accomplish that in the short-run. My goal is to sustain the CAB as a vigorous and important instrument and use it in order to achieve that long-range,” he said.

Riveles retired from a 30-year career in the State Department as a nuclear arms control negotiator. He also served in the defense department and continues to be a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses.

As a diplomat, Riveles served on delegations that negotiated the INF and START nuclear reduction treaties under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He was the chief negotiator for the ABM Treaty during the Clinton Administration and was nominated to the Senate for the rank of ambassador. 

Riveles also served in the Department of Homeland Security and in the Office of Science & Technology at the state department. He has taught at the University of Southern California, National War College, George Mason University, Munich University and most recently the University of New Mexico-Taos.

He earned a B.A. in Russian Studies from Yale University; an M.A in Modern Languages, Russian and Czech from Clare College and a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University.

Riveles joined the NNMCAB in September 2017 and quickly became active in discussions and analysis of the recommendations of an Energy Communities Alliance report on waste management. He worked with other board members to prepare a draft response incorporating a broad range of comments which the board approved. Those recommendations were accepted at a national level with very few changes.

Riveles and his wife Chris retired to Taos in 2010.

The NNMCAB is a community advisory group chartered in 1997 to provide citizen input to the U.S. Department of Energy.