Former NRC official Robert Taylor was appointed on Monday, August 26th as X-energy’s Vice President, Regulatory Affairs and Licensing, the company said in a press release.
Taylor most recently worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as Deputy Office Director for New Reactors, where he led a team of engineers in developing and implementing licensing for advanced nuclear reactors. Before working with the NRC, Taylor trained Navy personnel in operating submarine nuclear reactors.
X-Energy is a developer of advanced small modular nuclear reactors and fuel technology for clean energy generation, according to the release.
Holtec International, Jupiter, Fla., said it developed new technology to combat the rising temperature of Lake Michigan used for cooling water in the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station that the company aims to restart by 2025.
With the new upgrade, the cooling system will require little structural work which could cut costs by over 50% of original projections, Hotec said in a press release.
Obituary: Nuclear naval, industry veteran Paul Blanch; turned whistleblower; 82; ‘a lifelong battle with poor decisions’
Long time nuclear power worker and outspoken Nuclear Regulatory Commission critic Paul Blanch died August 19th after a brief hospitalization. He was 82.
Blanch was survived by his three children, and great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins, friends and colleagues, according to an obituary posted online. A survivor did not reply to a query seeking a cause of death but a family member’s post on social media appeared to confirm Blanch’s passing.
An obituary published in the Hartford Courant said Blanch’s recent hospitalization followed “a lifelong battle with poor decisions.” The obituary also said it was “lovingly cajol[ing]” Blanch.
Blanch joined the Navy and served as a reactor operator on nuclear submarines from 1964-1971, according to the obituary.
During his time in the Naval Reserves he also obtained a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and went on to work as the supervisor of instrumentation and control at Northeast Utilities, the obit said. He worked there for 21 years then became a whistleblower, “following his morals of safety,” according to the obit.
Among the issues Blanch brought to public light, according to the obit, was one with Rosemount transmitters that would not only malfunction but also not show any indication that they had done so. These transmitters, Blanch said in congressional testimony in 1993, “are used to measure flows, levels, pressures.”
Much of Blanch’s correspondence with the NRC is preserved in the agency’s Agencywide Documents Access and Management System. Among the earliest still in the system is a letter from 1982. The latest shows that Blanch was still in touch with the agency as recently as January, by which time he was about a couple months short of his 82nd birthday.
Much of the correspondence with NRC related to the Algonquin Incremental Market Project Pipeline near the Indian Point Energy Center Units 2&3. He sent many letters worrying about the safety of those gas lines and said the NRC was even ignoring a Sandia National Labs report on potential hazards.
Among his latter-day letters to the NRC was a missive to the agency’s now-retired head of public affairs in which Blanch urged radical changes to the way the agency interacts with the public.
