Building the fields of nuclear energy and nuclear waste management, 1950-1999
By: Thomas H. Pigford ; with introductions by Richard D. Smyser and Elizabeth Pigford. Interviews conducted by Carl Wilmsen in 1999. Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley,
Contributors: Wilmsen, Carl.; Bancroft Library. Regional Oral History Office.
Published: 2001
Subjects: University of California, Berkeley. Dept. of Nuclear Engineering.; Nuclear engineers -- California -- Interviews.; Nuclear engineering.; Nuclear energy -- Accidents.; Nuclear energy -- Research -- California.; Nuclear energy -- Safety measures.; Radioactive waste disposal.; Radioactive waste disposal in the ground.; Nuclear arms control.
Genres: Interviews.
Other titles: University history series.
Description: Family and youth in Mississippi; background in chemical engineering, graduate student at MIT, wartime service at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; co-founding the Department of Nuclear Engineering Education at MIT with Manson Benedict in 1952; developing the first nuclear engineering textbook, nuclear reactor designs and government policy in the 1950s; starting the Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley in 1959, reflections on citizen and student activism in the 1960s, environmental concerns of the 1960s and 1970s; service on the National Atomic Energy Safety Licensing Boards, 1963-1974, reviewing the Diablo Canyon, Fermi-l, and General Electric reactors; investigating the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, member of delegations to the Soviet Union, 1988, and the Ukraine, 1994; changing research focus to nuclear waste management in the 1970s, theoretical breakthroughs in the transport of radioactive materials through geologic media, consultant to the WIPP and Yucca Mountain projects, reviewing the Swedish program, 1986-1991, site characteristics of Yucca Mountain, dissenting opinion on Yucca Mountain Standards, 1995, working to deter proliferation of nuclear weapons in the 1990s; role of family in career.