Milton Shaw: Part I

Shortly before Alvin Weinberg’s 80th birthday, Bill Cabage and Carolyn Krause, Journalists associated with ORNL, interviewed him.

During the interview Weinberg was asked to comment on Milton Shaw. Weinberg responded, “Milton Shaw had a singleness of purpose. In many ways I admired him, and in many ways he drove me nutty. He had a single-minded commitment to do what he was told to do, which was to get the Clinch River Breeder Reactor built. My views were different from his. I think the Commission decided that my views were out of touch with the way the nuclear industry was actually going.”

Milton Shaw was actually a Knoxville boy. He was born on Oct. 5, 1921, in Knoxville. His father, William Shaw, was a professor of agricultural chemistry at the University of Tennessee. There were fewer than 1000 Jews in Knoxville when Shaw was born, and in some respects the Knoxville Jewish community was typical of the South. The Knoxville Jewish community had contributed on major voice the Nation, Adoph Ochs, the the founder of the Ochs-Sulzberger dynasty that still owns the New York Times grew up in Knoxville, and began his journalism career there.

Shaw studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, and probably received a draft deferment, because his field of study made him more valuable to the military with a complete education, than as a grunt. Upon graduation Shaw joined the Navy. He was sent to the Navy Propulsion School at Cornell University in 1944. The Navy then assigned him to the Pacific where he served as an engineering officer for the rest of the war.

Mr. Shaw served in the Navy as an engineering officer in the Pacific Theater during World War II. After the war Shaw continued his career with the Navy, working at the Naval Engineering Experiment Station and Testing Laboratory (EES) in Annapolis, Maryland. He sought out Rickover, and Rickover took him on, first sending Shaw to the Oak Ridge School of Reactor Technology in 1950-51, where according to Alvin Weinberg, he was an average student. Now average at Oak Ridge School of Reactor Technology in 1950 probably meant very, very bright. To be above average in that crowd you had to be a genius, of which there were more than a few of those floating around Oak Ridge at the time.

Shaw had had the quality of relentless determination. to get whatever job he was assigned done. He was the perfect executive officer, which Hyman Rickover recognized.

Rickover managed to insinuate himself into the AEC bureaucracy while also working for the Department of Defense, and holding Naval rank. These multiple hats gave Rickover great power, and he brought Shaw into the system. Shaw learned the use of power, an an abrasive, autocratic leadership style from Rickover. From 1950 to 1961, he reported directly to Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, known as the "father of the nuclear Navy" and who was serving in the Office of Naval Reactors for the Atomic Energy Commission. When Shaw left Rickover in 1961, it was to serve as a technical assistant to the assistant secretary of the Navy for research and development.

Shaw had worked on the development of the nuclear submarine, and then was Rickover’s man in charge of surface nuclear systems. He was responsible from conception to completion for the aircraft carrier prototype plant and the nuclear propulsion plants for the Enterprise and the Long Beach, as well as for all other surface ship propulsion plant projects.

The Shippingport reactor was really a Naval aircraft carrier reactor that had Shaw had developed. When President Eisenhower proposed his Atoms for Peace project, Rickover donated a spare aircraft carrier reactor that had been built for experimental purposes. The reactor was hooked up to a turbine and a generator, and thus became the nations first “civilian” nuclear power plant. Of course Rickover’s boys continued to run experiments on it.

Shaw understanding of technical issues, coupled with his management skills made him the supreme bureaucrat. During his three years as a senior assistant to the Navy assistant secretary, Shaw was actively involved with the management of all research, development, test and evaluation matters to the Navy and Marine Corps. He was also responsible for coordination and direction of the scientific and technical efforts of the Navy's bureaus, laboratories and offices. Needless to say, Shaw had a position in which he yielded great power, over the Navy’s scientific and engineering establishment, and he undoubtedly chose to do so.

In 1964 Shaw left the Navy Department, and joined the AEC as director of reactor research and development. That position gave him oversight of research the reactor programs of all the national laboratories including ORNL. Shaw did not flinch at using his authority to the utmost. In the case of ORNL he was accused of using his authority to destroy the Lab. I do not know is that was his intention, but he certainly succeeded in destroying the Reactor Chemistry Division.