Jong Kim in 1994 . . .

How did I get interested in nuclear energy? I am a mechanical engineer by education, with a B.S. (Seoul National University), M.S. (University of Missouri), and Ph.D. (Caltech), and I am a nuclear engineer by profession.

After receiving my degree in 1971, I stayed on as a research fellow for two years and then moved to Penn State’s Garfield Thomas Water Tunnel, which at the time was the largest closed-loop tunnel in the world, as a research associate doing naval hydrodynamics research.

That was the year the infamous energy (oil) crisis hit. I thought that nuclear energy would become a critical pillar in energy security and independence. The nuclear profession looked promising. Brookhaven National Laboratory was hiring engineers to develop computer codes, so I decided to join the team and in 1975 became an associate engineer at BNL. This is how my long nuclear journey began.