Opportunities to contribute expertise provide a particularly rewarding component of a faculty member's work. Prof. Peterson's professional activities include presently serving as Chairman of the UCB Department of Nuclear Engineering, chairing and serving on national laboratory technical peer review committees and on College committees, as well as service as a consultant to industry, as a participant in professional society activities, and as a journal editor. He has served on UCB College of Engineering strategic planning committees, as well chairing the College committee for Undergraduate Studies. He has contributed to the Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer as an Associate Editor and currently serves as an editor for Experimental Heat Transfer, and from 1996 to 1997 served as Chairman for the Thermal Hydraulics Division of the American Nuclear Society. He has made contributions as a consultant on the design of the Westinghouse AP-600 advanced reactor, and over the several years played a similar role for the GE Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (SBWR).
Prof. Peterson has served on a variety of national laboratory techical peer review committees. In December of 1994, he was asked to chair a peer review group to evaluate the potential for benzene accumulation in high-level radioactive waste tanks at the DOE's Savannah River Plant in South Carolina. At that time a important issue had been raised regarding the potential for accumulation of benzene in the event of ventilation failure during an in-tank process designed to separate cesium-137 and other radioactive isotopes from salt solutions. Their report formed the basis for resumed operation of the of the separation process, and the committee's predictions for the mechanisms that could drive benzene accumulation have now been born out by operating experience. Recently Prof. Peterson began serving as a member of the Technical Advisory Committee for the Strategic Materials Applications Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).