Steve Reece

Biography

Steve Reece is a Chartered Mining Engineer and Fellow of IMMM. He is currently the Acting Siting and Engagement Director for Radioactive Waste Management Ltd. Over the last 25 years he has specialised in the field of using underground void space for storage and disposal.

After graduating from Cardiff University, Steve worked in the South Wales coalfield where he held a number of supervisory and management positions including those of Colliery Manager at Trelewis Drift and Deep Navigation. He moved to the Durham coalfield in the early 90’s and was Manager at Easington Colliery. After a short period in a logistics role he returned to mining and moved to Winsford Rocksalt Mine in Cheshire where he was Mine Manager and Chief Mining Engineer for nearly 15 years. During that time he was instrumental in developing new business to use the high quality void space created by the large scale room and pillar mining method. These included a successful document archive storage business and the UK’s first underground hazardous waste repository.

Over the last 10 years Steve has focused his career on the strategic use of underground space working on the UK’s Geological Disposal Programme for Higher Activity Radioactive Waste and also spending time in Australia working on feasibility studies for geological disposal facilities for hazardous wastes.