William Adam:  

I've retired after thirty three years of nuclear risk assessment, safety analysis, dose consequence analysis, environmental contaminant transport / dispersion modeling, radiological safety procedure writing, industrial and radiological safety program oversight, as well as the licensing, inspection and enforcement programs for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Medical, Industrial and Academic licensees. I've also had primary responsibilities in emergency preparedness exercises, assessment of the adequacy of radiological monitoring techniques and instrumentation, nuclear facility decommissioning, and Agreement State Radiological Safety Programs. Working for various design engineering contractors of the Department of Energy, I've authored over 60 published radiological risk analyses, hazard classifications, nuclear calculation briefs and safety documents, addressing safety and risk management issues associated with the MOX fuel fabrication facility (a facility that will dismantle nuclear warheads and use the plutonium in nuclear fuel, so that it may never again be used for nuclear warheads (it's the nuclear version of "beating swords into plowshares"). I've also performed safety analyses for high visibility environmental restoration projects such as liquid and solid nuclear waste site remediation, plutonium production reactor decommissioning, and consulted on other industrial and radiological safety issues. Currently REALLY enjoying my retirement, with Eva, a miniature pot-bellied pig, (a.k.a. 90 pounds of pork, with attitude). After one of Washington High's illustrious senior counselors declared that I "would probably get into college, but would surely never finish", I graduated from UWM, with honors, had my undergraduate research project published in Radiation Research, and received my Masters and Doctorate in Bionucleonics (the application of nuclear physics to biology) from Purdue, on an Environmental Health fellowship. After that, I won a research fellowship at Duke University Medical Center in cardiac physiology, and from there decided I wanted to work in an environment where the people had a few more dimensions than their occupation - (read: normal people) and that's when I accepted a position with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which was, believe it or not, like a big (mostly happy) family. I was with them for thirteen years and was recognized as the NRC licensing reviewer whose productivity was "unmatched in the NRC". After some emergency brain surgery (to stabilize a sub-dural aneurysm at the base of my brain) in '88, which I had a 50% chance of surviving, I spent the next several years trying to deal with "a little short-term memory loss", resulting from the surgery. The neurologist's evaluation turned out to be a bit of an understatement. I had a "little" short-term memory loss in the same sense that the Titani...Expand for more