My story: Edward Warman—ANS member since 1960
We welcome ANS members with long careers in the community to submit their own stories so that the personal history of nuclear power can be capured. For information on submitting your stories, contact nucnews@ans.org.
When I graduated from Scranton University in 1956 with a B.S. in physics, I was in awe of the nuclear era and determined to be part of a nuclear future. Fortunately, I landed a position with Pratt & Whitney Aircraft as part of the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program. The position included a one-year assignment as a visiting staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
At ORNL, as part of Everitt Blizard’s Applied Nuclear Physics Division, I was assigned to the Lid Tank Shielding Facility at the X-10 Reactor. My plan: devotion to on-the-job training during the day and the study of nuclear engineering at night. However, as the most junior staff member, I was assigned to the 4:00 p.m.–12:00 midnight nightshift. That turned out to be a godsend, allowing me to audit courses at the Oak Ridge School of Reactor Technology (ORSORT) during the day and get my on-the-job training at night. Concentrating both day and night resulted in the most important year in my career.
In 1958, I joined General Dynamics’ Electric Boat Division, and a year later, when I was 24, I was named the youngest engineering supervisor among General Dynamics’ 150,000 employees. In addition to participating in the design and start-up of several nuclear submarines, I developed a shielding optimization program, starting with the Polaris fleet ballistic missile submarines.
In 1963, I joined Aerojet Nuclear Systems Co., the prime contractor for the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications (NERVA) program. My responsibilities included technical management of radiation and shielding activities of Westinghouse in Pittsburgh and supervision of the Dosimetry Laboratory at the Nuclear Rocket Development Station (NRDS) at the Nevada Test Site.
One of many highlights of my association with the space program was the opportunity to organize and chair a Symposium on Natural and Manmade Radiation in Space in March 1971. I served as the editor of the 1,000-plus page proceedings, which was published as a NASA technical publication.
By far the most memorable highlight of my years at Aerojet was being invited to spend a day in 1971 in the NASA Huntsville offices of Dr. W. Von Braun. The meeting was scheduled to address concerns that Dr. Edward Teller had raised about radiation safety aspects of manned missions with nuclear-powered rockets. Dr. Von Braun requested that a NERVA nuclear expert privately address the issues with him and Dr. Teller. At luncheon, we were joined by Dr. Von Braun’s senior colleagues, most of whom had come with him from Germany. They were anxious to meet Dr. Teller. The ensuing open discussion of possible uses of NERVA, including lunar missions, was amazing. Dr. Von Braun thanked me for addressing Dr. Teller’s concerns and noted, “Mr. Warman, we have made some real progress here today.” I was delighted to read the article in the April 2024 edition of Nuclear News entitled “Powering the Final Frontier,” a description of the nation’s planned resumption of a nuclear rocket program—picking up where we left off in 1972.
My next 26 years were spent with the Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation, including as chief engineer of the Nuclear Technology Division. After TMI, I concentrated mainly on severe accidents, including directing several probabilistic safety assessments of nuclear facilities.
In the years after TMI, I visited many U.S. nuclear power plants to discuss severe accidents, and I visited every nuclear power plant in Japan in 1980. Starting in 1982, I devoted myself full time to directing the Stone & Webster Source Term Project to realistically quantify radioactivity releases in severe accidents, known as an accident’s “source term.” In 1984, I was a corecipient of an ANS Special Award on the development of source terms.
At the International Atomic Energy Agency Experts Meeting on Chernobyl, held in Vienna in August 1986, Richard Wilson of Harvard and I joined David Rossin (coleader of the U.S. delegation and then ANS president) in a private meeting with Russian representatives arranged by the IAEA. I questioned the low magnitude of the source term for the accident reported by the Soviets at the general meeting, and Wilson and I both expressed concern about the adequacy of the reported radiological responses to limit radioiodine thyroid exposures among children. Because of iodine-131’s short natural decay half-life of 8 days, countermeasures to reduce thyroid exposures during the first days and weeks were of paramount importance. The bulk of the doses would have been received in April and May. Radioiodine production stopped on April 26, 1986. By 2005, more than 6,000 thyroid cancer cases had been diagnosed, and fifteen fatalities were reported among individuals who had been exposed as children in 1986. To my knowledge, those are the only Chernobyl fatalities that have been reported among the public—a far cry from the tens of thousands predicted.
In 1990, I was named a Stone & Webster vice president and an ANS Fellow and was elected chair of the ANS Nuclear Installations Safety Division.
In the early nineties, Jack Ohanian (ANS past president, 1990–1991) and I found ourselves in Soviet-occupied Prague. On a whim, we bought hats from some Soviet soldiers selling brand-new equipment—they were emptying out all their stores. We wore the hats on our walk back to our hotel, and were constantly verbally abused by people we passed on the street. Jack’s wife and my wife kept telling us to take off those stupid hats. When we arrived at our hotel we asked why we were being verbally assaulted. The concierge noted we both were wearing trench coats with the hats and were mistaken as two Red Army officers taking their last walk through Prague. He informed us that the Red Army was evacuating the next day and opined that we were lucky the assaults were only verbal. We were fat, dumb, and happy, and unknowing. I love my Soviet hat and the memories it brings in my old age.
In 1996–1997, I worked in Europe as team leader of the U.S. specialist team in the International Expert Group that developed the Chernobyl Shelter Implementation Plan.
The first 15 years of my retirement, starting in 1999, were spent as a member of the International Advisory Group. It was organized to advise the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which was charged with implementing the SIP, including enclosing the damaged reactor within the new safe confinement.
I also published a book entitled Chernobyl—The Rest of the Story in 2021.
