How Milton Shaw Blew the Nuclear Safety Issue.

I have returned to a discussion of Milton Shaw because he appears to be a pivotal figure in the American Atomic Energy program. Shaw lead the AEC into a controversy over nuclear safety, which eventually lead to its breakup. Shaw and his associates including AEC Commissioner, James Ramsey and Congressman Chet Hollifeld managed to alienate both the scientific community of the AEC's National Laboratories, as well as a large constituency drawn from the general public. Shaw appears to have believed that the public had accepted nuclear technology to a far greater degree than it had. Shaw simply mistook a pliant congressional committee with the public at large and believed that if he maintained a good relationship with a few members of Congress public support was assured. This was far from the case.

Ramsey, Hollifeld and Shaw appear to have taken the attitude that they understood nuclear safety issues better than the scientists who researched nuclear safety did, that they and not the scientists knew best what was in the public interest, and that to the extent the scientists disagreed with them, they - that is the scientific community - represented an obstruction to the accomplishment of desirable goals. In fact, the support of the scientific community was an important part of gaining public acceptance for the implementation of wide scale nuclear power generation. At a critical point, as a vigorous and dogmatic anti-nuclear movement was emerging, scientists were publicly lifting their voices to question the safety of the then current reactor designs, rather than reassuring the public of their safety. The scientists were genuinely alarmed, and this only added to public concerns. about the safety of nuclear power.

Milton Shaw's vision and his personality lay at the heart of the unfolding disaster. Robert Pool noted:

Milton Shaw, the head of the AEC's Division of Reactor Development and Technology, was convinced that such safety research was reaching the point of diminishing returns. An old Rickover protege, Shaw saw light-water reactors as a mature technology. The key to the safety of commercial power plants, he thought, was the same thing that had worked so well for the navy reactor program: thick books of regulations specifying every detail of the reactors, coupled with careful oversight to make sure the regulations were followed to the letter.

Pool here has captured the problems with Shaw's vision. During the Shaw era, Light water reactors were not a mature technology, and in fact many questions about nuclear safety needed to be resolved as American Scientists well understood.

Shaw's vision was shaped by his experience with Hyman Rickover's Navy reactor team, and later as an administrator of Navy research programs. Navy reactors were much smaller than those which American utility administrators now contemplated. Large size added both to reactor complexity and to the danger they potentially posed. As Pool pointed out, the Navy's solution was through very careful quality control and redundancy. This solution undoubtedly worked. A comparison of the United States Navy's nuclear safety record with that of the Soviet Navy is highly instructive. However, the frequent Soviet Naval reactor disasters, although sometimes fatal to members of submarine crews, did not cause major social displacement. This was not to prove the case in the accident involving a large Soviet civilian power reactor at Chernobyl.

Pool notes how the nuclear safety approach of the American scientific community differed from that of Rickover's Navy

a scientist's approach to safety (was) figure the maximum credible accident, prepare for it, and everything else will be automatically taken care of.

Shaw believed, Pool claims that the largest conceivable accident concepts were,

academic fantasies. he worst-case loss-of-coolant accidents, for example, envisioned a major cooling pipe breaking in two. It was a scientist's approach to safety: figure the maximum credible accident, prepare for it, and everything else will be automatically taken care of. But Shaw contended that nuclear accidents were more likely to be the result of little breakdowns that snowballed. Take care of the little things, and the big things would take care of themselves-that was Shaw's safety philosophy, and he was in charge of all the AEC's safety research.

The major nuclear accidents which concerned the scientists were admittedly rare. Yet Ameriican scientists were correct in assuming that Light Water Reactoir technology, from the viewpoint of nuclear safety, was by no means mature. This was to be proven in 1979 at a place called Three Mile island. Scientists at two AEC facilities, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the AEC's reactor testing station at Idaho Falls, had been carrying out nuclear safety research. Oak Ridge scientists, lead by George W, Parker, had been studying the response of nuclear fuel to reactor accidents since 1955. My father, C.J. Barton, Sr., had been part of this research team between 1960 and 1964, but had seen early indications of the pressure that Milton Shaw would put on nuclear safety research, and looked for another research focus to which he could apply his talents. In fact Parker and my father took a middle of the road attitude toward the dangers posed by nuclear accidents, and had concluded in their summation of ORNL nuclear safety research between 1955 and 1965 that

In conclusion, we wish to emphasize that there are many factors affecting the fission product source term and the amount of fission products which actually can escape the containment system of power reactors in reactor accidents.

Unlike Shaw, the Oak Ridge reactor chemists regarded their research as providing

highly useful information,

They concluded,

it is now recognized that the hazard of reactor accidents can be fully evaluated only through sophisticated accident simulation experiments in facilities such as the Containment Research Installation (ORNL), the Containment Systems Experiment (Battelle Northwest), 4 and the Loss-of-Fluid Test (Phillips-Idaho).

I now suspect that the report by Parker's team titled OUT-OF-PILE STUDIES OF FISSION-PRODUCT RELEASE FROM OVERHEATED REACTOR FUELS AT ORNL, 1955--1965. was "commissioned" by Weinberg to support the case that he and other scientists were arguing with the Shaw dominated AEC. My father was summonsed back from Molten Salt Breeder Reactor research to contribute his writing skills to the effort. He later stated that he had been asked to interpret George Parker to the world. Indirectly his interpretive efforts may have been effective enough to call Milton Shaw's wrath down, if not on the entire laboratory, at least upon the ORNL Reactor Chemistry Division, which was shortly thereafter destroyed.

Milton Shaw thought recommendations like those of George Parker and my father were a wasts of time and money. In her history of the Idaho National Laboratory, titled "Proving the Principle," Susan M. Stacy stated,

Shaw felt that standards and criteria, combined with experience and good engineering judgment would protect public safety. He sided with those who felt it was possible to prevent accidents by building reliable back-up systems— defense-in-depth. Understanding the moment-by-moment progress of an accident that would never happen was a waste of money.

While Milton Shaw had dealt primarily with ORNL management at a distance, he had chosen a more hands on approach at the Idaho Falls National Reactor Test site. The test sites began to feel pressure from Shaw after began when operators began to bring to bring a new research reactor to criticality for the first time.

As the operators rotated the con- trol cylinders, they saw that the count- rate recorders were not behaving according to prediction. It could mean a delay like an earlier one when the stain- less-steel coolant pipe had been acci- dentally over-pressurized. Some of the pipe, thirty-six inches in diameter, had bulged and deformed. The pipe was ruined. Replacing it had cost millions of dollars and a year of time. . . . the drive mechanisms for the sixteen control cylinders would not rotate on command. Each of the drive units had been installed backwards.

Milton Shaw, the director of AEC-Headquarters’ Division of Reactor Development and Technology, was not amused with the misstep with his new toy. The history of the Arco Lb asserts,

It was likely that if Shaw chose to assert his convictions, the shift in emphasis would change the com- fortable old way of doing things at the NRTS.

Shaw showed up in Idaho and delivered a Rickover style tirade to the upper management of the facility. Shaw was quite correct that the mistake had been serious blunder, but his management style was modeled after Rickover's and his solutions were simply to adopt adopt Rickover's solutions to all problems, has if fanatic attention to quality control could in all instances bring nuclear safety.

Shaw may have chosen to deal with the NRTS staff because they were more vulnerable and easily controlled by the Rickover method than ORNL was. The Rickover method involved humiliating people in order to break them, and treating people could be controlled by fear more gently. Shaw probably sumized that Weinberg was too big a fish to be controlled by the Rickover treatment, and thus controling ORNL would have involved first getting rid of Weinberg. This is exactly what Shaw did. Indeed Shaw also suceeeded in destroying ORNL as a reactor research center despite the fact that ORNL had given the Light Water Reactor concept to the Navy. Arco got to keep its reactors, but at a price,

A loss of coolant accident was a major concern of the scientists.

In the new plants, the reactor core con- tained tons of fuel. Analysts imagined the consequences if the coolant somehow failed to carry away the heat of fission- ing. Suppose a pipe leaked or broke? The SPERT tests had proven that such a situ- ation would easily put a stop to the chain reaction: the loss of pressure would allow the water to turn to steam; the lower density of steam would fail to moderate the neutrons; and the nuclear reaction would stop. But the radioactive decay of the fission products inside the fuel elements would continue to produce heat and continue to need cooling. Even though the decay heat was a small percent of the heat of a fissioning reactor, it was enough to melt the fuel and clad metal, leading to potentially violent interactions with water or air. Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory attempted to define what might be at stake. They imagined the worst case loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) in a reactor located very near a large city. They elaborated it with the worst possible weather conditions. Then they calculated the consequences if the fuel melted. They speculated that it would drop to the bottom of the pres- sure vessel, melt through it, fall to the concrete floor and basements beneath the power plant, burn through the con- crete, and proceed through the earth “to China,” or at least in the direction of China, until the fuel cooled naturally. Worse, steam pressure might rupture the containment vessel and send fission products into the atmosphere whichever way the wind was blowing. Having breached their triple containment, the fission products would be an immediate hazard in the air and could eventually contaminate soil and water supplies.

A reactor was designed to test the Loss of Coolant Accident at Arco, during the early 1960's before Shaw moved from the Navy Department to the AEC. The reactor, called the LOFT was intended to be tested to the point of destruction. It should be noted that George Parker and my father had deemed the LOFT to be an important project, but for Shaw it was a waste of time. Then, the regulatory responsibilities of the AEC presented Shaw with an excuse to divert the LOFT project to other uses.

Back in Washington, the regulators were trying to cope with license appli- cations. They wondered whether the proposed tests, being performed on a small reactor, would actually tell them anything relevant about large reactors. Some of the AEC staff doubted that the methods for analyzing the core melt or the water interaction with melting zircaloy were sophisticated enough to produce meaningful data. Nor were they sure that the containment vessel would withstand the gas pressures generated during the meltdown.

Milton Shaw wondered if the LOFT project would fall prey to the same kinds of problems as the ATR. He saw the possibility that unreliable parts or equipment might interfere with good test results. What was the point of an experiment if it used the wrong parts, the wrong materials, and met the wrong specifications? Results could never be duplicated. The project was about ten percent complete, and the reactor’s eighty-ton pressure vessel had been fabricated. Nevertheless, Shaw stopped the work to “regroup and do the job right.” Quality assurance hit the LOFT project. The experiment was going to become much more complex. ; ; ;

One view was that the AEC should confront it directly: test it, under- stand it, characterize it, and learn how to make it inherently impossible. This had been one purpose of the original test plan for the LOFT experiment. The other view was that this was costly and unnecessary. The China Syndrome should simply be prevented. Emergency core cooling system (ECCS) engineering should be so foolproof that nuclear fuel would never have a chance to melt. If anything was to be researched, it should be these engineering preventatives. . . .

For LOFT the upshot of all the talk was a loss of support for the original experi- ments. Those advocating research on the mechanism of the China Syndrome ultimately were disappointed. Aside from Shaw’s determination to make LOFT a showcase for new quality assurance procedures, the project drift- ed. People were laid off. Work stopped, started, stopped. Funds were held back or stinted, even though they had been appropriated.

Then researchers

developed computer models predicting the behavior of coolant in a LOCA. Among other experimental devices, they built a simulated reactor called Semiscale to help understand how coolant water would behave as it depressurized after a pipe broke. This process was called a “blowdown.” Blowdown tests and computer analysis of the simulated accidents led to computer programs, called codes, capable of predicting the performance of back- up cooling systems during a blowdown. . . . The Semiscale heat source was electrical but created the same high temperatures as a reactor. Between November 1970 and March 1971, a series of tests demonstrated—unexpectedly—that after certain accidents, steam pressure in the coolant pipes prevented any emergency water at all from gaining access to the core. . . . The margins of safety that had previously been assumed for commercial emergency core cooling systems would have to be revised downward. .

Thus Shaw's contention that LWR technology was mature was demonstrated to be false. The AEC was forced to adopt

a set of requirements more conservative than had been the case before. They were “Interim” Acceptance Criteria, a set of safety requirements that a utility company had to meet in order to obtain a license from the AEC.

These revised licensing requirements forced the costly revision to the designs of nuclear plants that were already under construction as well as costly revisions to the design of planned plants. Shaw's view that the LWR was mature was proving not only mistaken, but a very costly mistake that began to create market doubts about the viability of nuclear power.

The disatisfaction among Idaho scientists was extreme, and science writers told of secret night time rondavous in Idaho Falls, followed by clandestine meetings. But beyond the dissatisfaction of scientists was the questions that the market was beginning to ask about the viability of nuclear power.

Despite the growing nuclear safety problem, as Robert Pool notes:

In 1972, for example, with a hundred light-water reactors either built or on order in the United States and no commercial breeders, Shaw split his $53 million safety budget down the middle-half for light-water and half for the breeder.

Shaw's disregard for the safety issue, his deluded concept of nuclear maturity, and his dogged determination to continue forward with the oversold LMFBR project had left the realm of sanity.

Milton Shaw: Part II

Part II

When Milton Shaw went to the AEC in 1964 he already had a well-formed set of beliefs, attitudes and professional skills. His entire working career had been spent with the Navy, first as a junior officer, and then as a young engineer who had pioneered the modern nuclear fleet under Rickover. Almost all of Shaw reactor experience had been with Naval ship propulsion. That was almost entirely with the Light Water Reactor. Rickover and Shaw had adapted Navy management systems to the running of shipboard reactors. Every system on the reactor was duplicated. If one system failed, another was ready to take its place. Duplicate systems meant that if a system needed to be shut down for maintained, another was available to take its place. Thus reactors could be run continuously. Crews were highly trained. Every operating procedure was elaborated in detain in technical manuals. Officers and men were expected to always follow manuals to the letter.

I once did a brief study of the Soviet Navy’s reactor problems. The Soviet Navy had a system was much more lax than the US Navy, and the soviets paid the price for it.

Shaw’s strengths as a manager included keeping researchers and research on tract. Shaw identified objectives, set by superiors, and worked relentlessly to make sure that objectives were meet. His attitude to authority was military. Orders were to be obeyed.

When he joined the AEC in 1964, Shaw took charge of a very different system. Scientist ran the National Labs, and their methods took latitudes for curiosity. Scientist like my father and George Parker were given significant latitude to direct their own work. The result was that they sometimes solved problems, and sometimes discovered problems, as George Parker was doing in his reactor safety research.

Executive Officers in the Navy are the chief inspectors of shipboard operation, and Shaw functioned very much like a Naval Executive Officer. During the early 1960’s George Parker and my father had run an annual international conference on reactor safety issues. Shortly after Shaw’s ascension to power at the SEC, that conference was ordered shut down. Shaw then proceeded, systematically to attempt to drive Parker out of the nuclear safety business.

From Shaw’s viewpoint nuclear safety was a done deal, and further research on it was a waste of time. Shaw viewed light water reactors as a mature technology. From his perspective, all that was required was to build in sufficient redundancy, write the technical manuals, and make sure that the workers were well trained and that rules were followed.

From Shaw’s perspective the scientists at Oak Ridge and at other national Laboratories, were a bunch of unruly boys, recruits who need to be set in line by Chief Petty Officer tactics.

Chuck Rice, who had been the President of Aerojet Nuclear, an AEC contractor recalled an encounter with Shaw:

After I had been elected president of Nuclear [Aerojet Nuclear], we had a big dinner for key managers in the company at the Stardust Motel. Milton Shaw was there, Bill Ginkel, many from Aerojet, all the way down to branch managers. Shaw got up and did his Rickover-type tirade on all that these people in the room had done wrong. They were lousy managers, had poor control, and so on.

When it was my turn to speak, I got up and listed the outstanding accomplishments of the group and complimented them on the work they had done so well.

As I walked out after dinner deBoisblanc came up and said, “I really appreciated the comments. You’ll be fired, but it was nice to hear it.”

The next day there was a meeting on whether to fire Rice or not. Shaw said, “Find out the reason for his speech. Then we’ll decide.” Someone called me and I said, “Shaw works at Headquarters, I work here. If we are to do well, I’ve got to invite the people who work
here to join my party.” I kept my job

Shaw believed that reactor operations should be subordinated to quality assurance. Parts and systems must meet standards, and management must assure the standards always be meet.

Shaw was authorized by the AEC to sweep the national labs clean with a new broom. Alleging that labs were duplicating efforts, he demanded the merger of working units, and the redirection of lab staff assignments. He sought tight control on research efforts.

Shaw believed himself to have all the answers, and did not brook opposition. Not even Alvin Weinberg was safe from Shaw’s broom.

Shaw believed that reactor safety was largely a matter of good engineering. Once the principles of proper reactor design were understood, good judgment and adherence to sound design principles would always assure that safety would be maintained. The belief of Weinberg and others that scientist like George Parker should continue to working on safety issues was discounted by Shaw who thought that further research was a waste of effort. Shaw believed that emergency cooling for reactors was a wasted effort, if the reactors were well engineered to begin with. This belief was to cost the reactor industry billions of dollars and was to have serious consequences at Three Mile Island.

Scientist began to believe that Shaw was vindictive, and that he would punish people and institutions that failed to adhere to his dictates. As scientist, some late in their professional careers, began to be laid off from national Labs, a belief that Shaw had instituted nothing short of a purge of AEC research programs. Moral plummeted at AEC facilities, and chaos reigned.

Chuck Rice explained Shaw’s new system to Idaho congressman Orval Hansen:

“In the past, reactor and environmental safety was derived from experienced experts working together as a loosely knit team, each member of which expected the remaining members to perform
the appropriate functions at the appropriate time without clear cut lines of responsibility and delegated authorities.
In response to AEC desires and directives, this informal system has, in a period of less than one year, been replaced by a highly formalized system that places primary reliance on unswerving adherence to a set of interlocking procedures and responsibilities
that have been subjected to multiple reviews by boards of specialists. The writing of prospecifications has become a job for the skilled engineer rather than the purchasing agent.
Carefully documented engineering studies have replaced the quick fix by the maintenance man.”

Shaw was not above blaming others for problems he had himself created. Oscar Wilde once wrote about puppets, "There are many advantages in puppets. They don't argue with you, they don't have any tastes in art, and they don't have anything to lose." This was what Shaw sought in science.

From the viewpoint of nuclear safety, aspects of Shaw's attitude were above reproach. The super quality of American reactors, which can operate at maximum efficiency 90% of the time, and the fact that no life has ever been lost due to civilian reactor safety issues, are certainly testimonies to the value of his quality control system. At the same time, Shaw’s short sightedness contributed to the Three Mile Island incident, which was more than anything else, a disaster for the American Nuclear Industry.

By 1970, concern about nuclear safety was spreading. The Scientific community as a whole was aware of what was happening at places like ORNL, where the safety concerns of Scientists like George Parker were being ignored. Weinberg went to bat for his scientist, and was told that he was out of touch, and that if he continued to speak out about safety, there was no place for him in the nuclear industry.

As the very moment Shaw was purging scientist who were concerned about nuclear safety, a wide spread movement opposing nuclear power emerged.

George Parker's Last Discovery

My father was extremely pleased that I posted his memorial to George Parker.  Parker continued to work at ORNL almost until his death.  As I note elsewhere he and my father continued to collaborate on statements supporting Nuclear Power, at least till 1995.  This press release from  ORNL shows that Parker's skills as a scientist had not left him in old age.   

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Feb. 21, 1997 — While working on some glass composition experiments at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), researcher George Parker stumbled onto a waste treatment solution that is more efficient and less expensive.

During the experiments, Parker noticed that his stainless steel tools were disappearing in a solution he made. While the experiments were designed to find glasses that could oxidize certain metals, the rapid dissolution of corrosion-resistant stainless steel was surprising. He consulted researcher Ed Beahm, who supported Parker's claim through a series of calculations.

Parker, Beahm and Charles Forsberg soon realized that Parker's discovery of a solution that could quickly dissolve anything could be used to immobilize waste in glass form. This technology became part of the unique system called GMODS (Glass Material Oxidation and Dissolution System).

The GMODS one-step process converts a variety of waste forms, including metals, ceramics and amorphous solids, to high-quality waste glass using the dissolution glass, which Parker discovered. It also separates halogens from the wastes and oxidizes organics, converting their residue into glass. The process result is a high-quality waste product ready for storage and designed to meet Environmental Protection Agency criteria for chemically non-hazardous waste forms.

"Waste management systems can be split into two categories: those that treat well-defined wastes and produce a high-quality product and those that treat complex mixtures and produce an inferior waste form," researcher Charles Forsberg said. "What we don't have on the market is an economical way to turn complex mixtures into a high-quality waste form."

The researchers found that the dissolution glass enabled them to separate chlorides from the waste as sodium chloride (table salt) and oxidize any metal or organic compounds that may be present in one step. Conventional systems require that non-oxide materials - the majority of waste - be oxidized before they can be combined with the glass, which adds a step and increases the cost.

Glass is the preferred waste immobilization method internationally because it has a low leach rate in groundwater. The glass that is formed through GMODS will be contained in canisters and buried underground. Forsberg looks to the ocean for examples of good waste forms.

"The ocean beach could be considered a 4 billion-year-old leaching experiment to determine what are good waste forms," he said. "The good waste forms are the materials that make long-lasting beach sand. The poor materials, such as salts, are those that are dissolved in the ocean." A process that makes glass and separates salt from the waste is needed to make a good waste form.

Failure has daunted those trying to develop a high-quality waste product through systems similar to GMODS. Most systems have no way to remove those elements in the waste that make poor-quality glass.

"We were able to overcome this problem by converting the waste materials into storage materials through induction heating and chemical reaction, which occurs when the dissolution glass and waste combine," Parker said. "This process makes it possible to keep the temperature low and prevents the production of new and unwanted materials that must be converted for storage."

One U.S. patent for GMODS has been granted and one is still pending. A European patent is also pending.

Forsberg, Beahm and Parker began working on the project in 1991. Funding came from a program entitled "Use of Glass Sacrificial Oxides to Dissolve Spent Fuel." Today, researchers are seeking funding to continue the work. With the additional funding, ORNL researchers will build a pilot plant to develop GMODS for applications on an industrial scale.

Two public statements on energy by C.J. Barton, Sr.

Two comments on energy and CO2 by George Parker and C.J. Barton, Sr.

From his retirement from ORNL in1977 onward my father continued to speak out on nuclear power, fossil fuels, CO2, and global warming.  He and George Parker continued to collaborate on statements in support of nuclear power.  They had first called attention to the problem of global warming in 1977, and 18 years later their concerns had grown.  I believe that the 1995 statement, published in the Oak Ridger, was the last public statement they made together.  Below I have also included my fathers last published statement on energy issues to date.  In that statement he called for a National Energy Policy.   He speaks as a scientist, and calls attention to the wastefulness of using oil and natural gas -  nonrenewable natural resources - for energy rather than as feed stock for the petrochemical industry.   My father was 91, when his wrote the last statement, and although almost every voice of his generation had been silenced by time by death or old age, he still spoke out firmly. The same year he also published a statement of opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

Nuclear power less damaging to environment than coal
By Charles J. Barton, Sr. and George Parker (The Oak Ridger, 1995)

The protest demonstration at the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant and efforts to prevent its starting show that opposition to nuclear power production in this country is alive and flourishing. Even more convincing evidence of anti-nuclear sentiment is that no new U.S. nuclear power plants have been ordered since 1978.

Two aspects of the Watts Bar demon­stration need particular attention: the state­ment of the demonstrators that their aim is to protect the environment and their signs attempting to associate the Watts Bar plant with the Chernobyl disaster.

There are presently 419 operating nu­clear power plants worldwide (108 in the United States). Of these, 330 are light-wa­ter moderated, as is the Watts Bar plant, Many of them have been safely operated for 10 to 20 years. To date, there has been only one major accident in an operating reactor of the light-water type.

The accident at Three Mile Island at­tracted a tremendous amount of TV and newspaper attention. However, the fact that no one exposed to radiation from that, accident received a radiation dose greater than that which the average U.S. citizen receives from natural sources in a year has largely been ignored.

The Chernobyl-type reactor is far from reaching the safety requirements for nucle­ar power plants in this country. In fact, this country and several European nations have offered Ukraine substantial inducements to close power plants of this type because of doubts concerning their safety.

Coal-burning power plants produce about 52 percent of the electricity used in this country. Coal contains a small amount of radioactive materials: 1.3 parts, per mil­'lion,ofuranium and 3.2 ppm of thorium on the average.

Because of the tremendous amount of coal required to produce electricity, 4 mil­lion tons per year for a 1000-megawatt plant, a significant quantity of these natu­rally occurring radioactive materials is dis­tributed to the environment around coal burning plants in fly ash.

Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have calculated that people in the vicinity of such plants receive a radia­tion dose from this source about 100 times greater than that which they would receive from a nuclear power plant.

The above-mentioned radiation dose from uranium and thorium in fly ash is of small consequence when compared to the adverse effects of other impurities in coal. Sulfur oxide and nitrogen oxides in coal combustion gases is an important contrib­utor to acid rain. The increasing concen­tration of carbon dioxide in the atmo­sphere (greenhouse effect) is also believed to contribute to global warming.

Unfortunately, health effects of coal combustion products are not nearly as well known as the effect of radioactive materi­als, but studies at the Electric Power Re­search Institute and elsewhere have shown the total health effects of generating elec­tricity with coal are greater than for nucle­ar power plants.

Accidents in coal mines, health effects in mining (black lung) and accidents at railroad crossings are principal contribu­tors to the total health effects of the coal­plant fuel cycle. The health effect of min­ing uranium, principally lung cancer from exposure to radon, is an important contrib­utor to the health effects of the nuclear re­actor fuel cycle.

The information cited above provides evidence that nuclear power plants are less harmful to the environment than coal­burning plants.

This raises the question: Why are peo­ple in groups like Earth First willing to risk being jailed in efforts to, as they view it, protect the environment?

Richard Roberts, an official in the Energy Research and Development Administration, a Department of Energy predecessor agency, stated in 1976 that our country seemed to be swept by a virulent form of "nuclearphobia" exhibited by a disbelief in any encouraging thing that experts in the nuclear energy area might say. There does not seem to have been much improvement in this situation in the last 18 years.

One cause of nuclearphobia is an appar­ent lack of interest on the part of newspa­pers and TV news people in positive news. It seems that anyone can produce an arti­cle saying that something will hurt you, especially radiation, and can get the atten­tion of news people.

Efforts to rebut misinformation seldom get published in newspapers or aired on TV, the only sources of most of the pub­lic's information. Better educated news people should be able to weigh the evi­dence and, at least, present both sides of such arguments.

A large effort has been put forth in this country in recent years to develop new standard nuclear power plant designs.

These plants will be even safer to operate than those presently in use and can proba­bly be built more economically. As aging nuclear power plants are retired and elec­tricity requirements continue to increase, electric utilities will have to choose the technology for future power plants.

In spite of wishful thinking about new power sources such as wind and sun, the choices for large power plants presently are coal and nuclear.

Some countries, notably France, Japan and Great Britain, have already made their choice in favor of nuclear power. France is already producing 75 percent of its elec­tricity in such plants.

Our choice for meeting future electricity needs should be based on facts, not fear.

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Concerns about use of fossil fuels and global warming
By Charles J. Barton, Sr., (The Oak Ridger, 2003)

Hans Blix, outgoing director general of The IAEA published an article entitled Atomic Energy in the 21st Century in the September Issue of Nuclear News, a publication of the American Nuclear Society.

This excellent article considers factors affecting energy policy from the global viewpoint that his position provides..

I will discuss here the pressing need for adopting a national energy policy to guide the expansion of U.S. electrical power production in the 21st century.

First, a little history. In 1975 I attended a Project Independence hear­ing in Philadelphia at the request of Ed Struxness, my boss at the time. This was one of a series of 10 such hearings held at various locations around the country.

Their announced objective was development of a national strategy to reduce the likelihood of a repetition of the scarcity of oil caused by the earlier Arab embargo on oil shipments to the United States. This strategy, if it had been achieved, could have served as a limited na­tional energy policy.

My report to Struxness on the Philadelphia hearing was subtitled "An Axe-Grinders Convention."

Many speakers were scientists es­pousing various energy-producing techniques such as solar and wind power or use of renewable fuels for electricity generation.

These speakers were obviously hoping for funds to further develop their pet projects. Other axe ­grinders were politicians ranging from senators and governors to mayors, with a wide range of objectives.

The results of the Project Inde­pendence hearings were to be sum­marized in a report soon after the hearings were concluded and, pre­sumably, actions to reduce our de­pendence on imported oil were to be undertaken.

Although a number of projects that I heard discussed at the hearing continued to be funded, only the fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - have been widely used for large scale production of electricity.

The principal result of the early 1970's oil shortage was the storage of a large quantity of oil in under­ ground salt mines.

Nothing resembling a national energy policy emerged. Although nuclear power plants produce ap­proximately 20 percent of U.S. electricity, there have been no new orders for nuclear power plants in the United States since 1978;

Blix points out the advantage of nuclear power as compared to use of fossil fuels. He says that, world­wide, the fossil fuels provide about 85 percent of commercial energy, divided as follows: 37 percent for oil, 25% for coal, 21 percent for gas. The balance is divided nearly equally between hydro and nuclear power.

In the United States, coal burning power plants produce more than 50 percent of the electricity used.

One advantage of nuclear power that Blix emphasized is the limited volume of nuclear waste in comparison to coal. He stated that the limited volume of nuclear waste is one of the greatest advantages of nuclear power.

This statement is in contrast to the common belief that nuclear wastes are one of the greatest liabil­ities of nuclear power.

Blix introduced me to the concept of energy density. He says that one kilogram (kg) of firewood pro­duces about one kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity; 1 kg of coal produces about 3 kWh; 1 kg of oil produces about 4 kWh; 1 kg of natural uranium produces about 50,000 kWh; and 1 kg of plutonium produces about 6,000,000 kWh.

The latter figure confirms my be­lief that President Jimmy Carter dealt a major blow to the U.S. nu­clear power industry by eliminating the used fuel reprocessing option.

Although there are significant en­vironmental effects of coal-burning power plants resulting from produc­tion of huge qualities of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and waste, the most worrisome factor ls the global warming effect of carbon dioxide, an effect coal shares with oil, gas and other burnable fuels.

It seems like an argument to limit worldwide production of carbon dioxide will be reached in the near future. The only options for a large scale increase in the production of electricity that do not produce carbon dioxide are nuclear and hydro power.

In most country these are for new dam projects. Blix states: “If the fear of global warming after all were to be unfounded, nothing would have been lost by greater use of nuclear power, as the cost of nuclear power is roughly competitive with fossil fuel alternatives.

Not mentioned in Blix' article but of concern to me as a chemist is the continued use of oil and natural gas for the generation of electricity. These non-renewable resources, particularly Natural gas, could be better used in my opinion for future production of petrochemicals.

I believe that all of the above-mentioned factors and others discussed by Blix need to be carefully examined in preparation for the adoption of a US energy policy, which is long overdue.

George Parker - A world-class experimenter

I am sure that my father will be pleased to learn that I have posted his tribute to George Parker on the Internet. I had not realized prior to reading this tribute that George Parker, like my father was a native of the northern border of East Tennessee. Parker was from Johnson City, and my father grew up in Jellico. Parker was a scientist who died with his boots on. He was still making discoveries in 1997, and is listed as a co-author of a number of ORNL publications as late as 1994. George Parker died on September 6, 1997 after a career at ORNL that lasted more than 50 years. He retired in 1996, but continued to work as a consultant, until he was too sick with to work any longer. .It is quite clear that George Parker was an icon at ORNL, and was perhaps the world's greatest authority of fission products release during his lifetime. Thus the articles that George Parker wrote with my father on nuclear safety, carried his great authority along with my father's very considerable authority. (Cross posted on bartoncii.)

By C.J. Barton, Sr.

Many people in this area are undoubtedly grieved, as I am, by the passing of George W. Parker.

One of my regrets in regard to George is that I never got around to writing the George Parker story that I discussed with Barbara Lyon when she was editor of the ORNL Review. The following is a substitute for the story that I envisioned at that time.

George got his start in working with fission products at the University of Chicago. I have heard it said that when criticality was first achieved in a pile there, George was in a nearby laboratory stirring a pot containing some fission products. He soon transferred to Oak Ridge, close to his former home in or near Johnson City, and started the career in what became the Oak Ridge National Laboratory that would span a period of more than half a century.

Lots of fission products soon were produced in the Graphite Reactor and George became involved in work with some highly radioactive materials. George never was one to worry about exposure to radioactivity, and his former co-workers George Creek, Paul Lantz, and Bill Martin have told some pretty hairy tales of their experiences. One health physicist told me recently that when they started getting after George about the high [radiation] exposure levels on by his badge, he began leaving it in his office.

I first met George in the early spring of 1949, about six months after I started work in the Chemical Development Division at Y - 12. He and his associate, Paul Lantz helped me to develop the radioactive tracer techniques that made possible the rapid progress of research on the separation of hafnium from zirconium and the eventual availability of caddying for the nuclear reactor submarine.

This help was typical of George. He never was too busy to assist others who came to him for help. He not only had a store of experience with radioactive materials to draw on, he had over the years stashed away a fabulous collection of equipment that he would share with others.

George was one of the first experimenters to recognize the importance of measuring the release of fission products from overheated reactor fuel and he started such studies in 1955. A fire in a British Magnox reactor that occurred about 1957 demonstrated the importance of this work, and when I joined George's group in 1960, his attention was focused on uranium metal fuel such as that used in Magnox reactors and the Graphite Reactor.

I helped some in that research and I recall carrying hot samples to Hugh Parker's analytical laboratory on the end of a 10-foot-long rod. However, we learned that I could make my most important contribution to George's program by writing,

We co-authored a chapter on fission product release from overheated reactor fuels that was published in Volume 2 of "The Technology of Nuclear Reactor Safety" that was edited and published by MIT. That was considered to be a rather prestigious document at the time it was published in 1973.

George's reputation and wide acquaintance among foreign experimenters enabled us to provide an international flavor to the three symposiums on reactor chemistry that we organized and helped to hold in Gatlinburg in the early '60s. We enjoyed the contacts that these meetings provided as well as the fellowship with a wide variety of experimenters.

After several years in which my principal mission seemed to be to present George Parker's work in a readable form, I moved on to other work. George was a big help to me when I established a glove box labo­ratory in one comer of Building 4501, where his work was located, and which he helped to design.

We had lunch together most days, a custom that started when we worked together. The fellowship that we enjoyed in these lunches was enhanced at times by the presence or experimenters from abroad who came to work with George for varying lengths of time. Their presence demonstrated the extent of George's international reputation.

In summary, George was a uniquely talented person whom I considered to be a world-class experimenter. He had an unusual ability to visualize studies that needed to be done, design equipment needed to do the job and get it constructed, and then to perform the necessary research.

His reputation as an experimenter was well enough known among the people who controlled the purse strings that he was able to continue as an ORNL employee long beyond the normal retirement age.

Finally, I have lost a valued friend and the scientific community has lost an exceptionally gifted experimenter.

C.J. Barton, Sr. at ORNL: Into the 1960's

In the late 1950’s my father was nearing 50. He had come back from a major political problem , a conflict with his boss Warren Grimes over my fathers stand in opposition to local liquor sales. Along the way he had contributed to the way scientist’s design and use an important research tool, the gloveboxes. The glovebox research had come about because he had been asked to do research that required glove box use. His research problem had been to establish if it ware possible to use Plutonium as a fuel in Molten Salt Reactors. Plutonium is a very dangerous material to work with, and there had been fires and accidents involving glovebox research in the past. My father had , by the late 1950's reached an age at which many scientists begin to loose their productivity, but his most productive years at ORNL lay ahead of him.

In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s some ORNL research focus shifted from experiments with exotic liquid fuel reactors, to questions concerning the light water reactor. The success of the Atomic submarine had caught many people’s attention. Admiral Hyman Rickover had a far more narrow focus than Alvin Weinberg, and Eugene Wigner. Rickover was a navy man and the navy liked boilers, because they were the traditional way to power ships. A light water reactor is in fact a reactor inside a boiler. Not only does the water cool the reactor, it also slows down the neutrons that cause a chain reaction. But ordinary water does not do as good job of promoting a chain reaction as graphite or “heavy water reactors” do. Hence LWRs need more U235 to keep their chain reaction going.

Rickover saw that the light water reactor could power for more than submarines. it could also be useful for powering surface ships, and Rickover realized, civilian power plants. Rickover had pushed for the development of reactors large enough to power aircraft carriers. President Eisenhower had called for the development of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and the aircraft carrier reactor allowed Rickover to kill two birds with one stone. Rickover donated a naval reactor to serve as a prototype civilian power reactor. At the same time, the navy was still able to do research with the reactor.

The Shippingport reactor thus became the prototype civilian power reactor. And virtually every functioning power reactor since has been a light water reactor. The Light Water reactor was an ORNL project and the staff of ORNL from Alvin Weinberg downward was aware of its flaws and weaknesses. One of the problems of the light water reactor was what could be called its intrinsic safety issues.

Light water reactors are supposed to heat water, and hot water, under pressure is a difficult medium to work with. There was always a danger that a leak could develop somewhere in the plumbing. If the coolant started leaking, then the temperature inside the reactor would start to rise. This would intern increase the pressure inside the reactor pressure vessel, and force more water out. Thus a loss of containment accident could turn disastrous.

Research at ORNL increasingly turned to the question of what could happen in the event of a light water reactor accident. That was where George Parker came in. Parker was the ORNL Reactor Chemistry Division’s leading expert on the behavior of radioisotopes in reactor accidents. Parker was like my father, a senior scientist, who was more comfortable in a lab than in a staff meeting.

My father, who had speech difficulties, was a good writer. Parker was not. My father was assigned in 1960 to work with George Parker, if only to help Parker to get his ideas and research on paper. My father was to later say that his role was to interpret George Parker to the world. But the fact that my father was lead author of some of their papers tells me that my father was taking the lead is some of their joint research. The two scientists hit it off, and became within the confines of the laboratory friends. My father greatly admired George Parker, who he considered to be a gifted scientist.

The two scientists worked together to gain a picture of what would happen in the case of a nuclear accident. They studied a chain of events that began with the overheating of fuel elements, to the breach of reactor fuel containment within the reactor, the melting of reactor fuel, and the behavior of molten reactor fuel. They traced the escape of radioisotopes from the confines of a reactor. It is probably safe to say that they made themselves into some of the worlds leading experts on fission product release in reactor accidents, and indeed the wrote the Chapter on Fission Product release in a 1973 Reactor Textbook, “The Technology of Nuclear Safety.”

Thus 20 years before the Three Mile Island accident G.W. Parker and C.J. Barton Sr., had a good idea what would happen if such an accident were to occur.

For most of my fathers first dozen years at Oak Ridge his writing was confined to internal reports, and other research related documents. But beginning in 1960, he began publishing papers in Nuclear Safety, and other scientific journals. At the same time, My father was writing a major technical report with George Parker and two other associates, “Fuel Element Catastrophe Studies: Hazards of Fission Product Release from Irradiated Uranium.”

That study was followed up in 1962 by a Nuclear Safety paper that my father coauthored with R.E. Adams, W.E Browning, and Parker, a paper on “Particle and Fission Product Behavior in Nuclear Accidents.”

During the early 1960’s my father became involved in an amazing diversity of studies. He continued to do Molten Salt research for the Reactor Chemistry Division. In addition nuclear fusion was becoming a focus at ORNL and he and R. A. Strehlow were asked to do research on how electric power might be extracted from a Thermonuclear Reactor. They propose a blanket approach, which turned high-energy neutrons into heat.

My father was also became involved in research about environmental contamination by radioisotope discharged from the Oak Ridge facilities.

Update: I have been reviewing my father's papers and have found a detailed account of his career. In a few matters, my father, who will be 96 on the 16th of this month, appears to have forgotten a few details. His memory for dates is not always accurate. He simply has for gotten exactly when things happened. On the other hand, he told me several stories that were not included in his earlier account. I plan to scan his most interesting papers, and post them. I must have to say that what my father writes is more interesting than anything I have said.