Pigford will close Friends of ORNL lecture series

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

The following is from the Oak Ridger, May 2, 2000:

Pigford will close Friends of ORNL lecture series 

Thomas H. Pigford, professor of nuclear engineering emeritus and
graduate professor at the University of California at Berkeley, will
give the fourth and last in the current Friends of Oak Ridge National
Laboratory Community Lecture Series at 8 p.m. Thursday in the main
auditorium at the American Museum of Science and Energy.

Co-sponsor of this lecture is the Oak Ridge Community Foundation and,
prior to the speaker's talk, the Rev. R. Boyd Carter, minister of the
United Church, Chapel on the Hill, and president of the Foundation, will
present the third annual International Friendship Bell Award. The award
goes to a local individual whose work and volunteer service personify
the bell's message of international
friendship and non-use of nuclear weapons. Thursday is also the fourth
anniversary of the dedication of the bell in A.K. Bissell Park.

George Jasny, retired vice president for technical operations, Lockheed
Martin Energy Systems Inc., will introduce Pigford. A reception hosted
by the Foundation will follow the lecture in the museum lobby. The
public is invited to both lecture and reception without charge.

Pigford's topic is "The Plutonium Paradox" and he speaks from years of
research and service on high-level advisory panels on nuclear reactor
safety and radioactive waste management.

He was a member of the Presidential Commission on the Accident at Three
Mile Island in 1979 and then later in 1986 was named to the Expert
Consultant Group to Evaluate the Chernobyl Accident and the N Reactor at
Hanford, Wash. He is co-author with Luther J. Carter of "Confronting the
Paradox in Plutonium Policies," a paper published in the winter issue of
Issues in Science And Technology. Carter, a writer in Washington, D.C.,
is author of "Nuclear Imperatives and Public Trust: Dealing with
Radioactive Waste."  Pigford and Carter call attention to what they see
as a major threat of nuclear weapons proliferation in the plutonium from
reprocessed commercial fuel.  Pigford is expected to detail this view
and outline, as the Issues article does, their recommendations to lessen
the threat.

Pigford, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a
co-founder of the American Nuclear Society, has chaired and served on
multiple advisory boards and peer review committees concerned with
geologic repositories for disposal and isolation of high-level
radioactive wastes.

He has had multiple ties with Oak Ridge over the years. From 1950 to
1952 he was assistant professor of chemical engineering and director of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Graduate School of Engineering
Practice located
here. His own graduate degrees are from MIT. His undergraduate study was
at Georgia Institute of Technology.

In 1952 he was senior development engineer with the Aqueous Homogeneous
Reactor Project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. From 1968 through 1976
he was a member of the Criticality Hazards Review Committee for the Oak
Ridge Y-12 Plant and Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant. From 1984 to
1988 he was a member of the Corporate Advisory Committee for ORNL.

Pigford is the brother of Mary Pigford Smyser, wife of Dick Smyser,
founding editor of The Oak Ridger and chairman of FORNL's Community
Lectures committee.
-- 
==================================================
Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director
Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, Inc.
136 S Illinois Ave, Ste 208, Oak Ridge, TN 37830
Phone (865) 483-1333; Fax (865) 482-6572; E-mail loc@icx.net 
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