Jay F. Kunze

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 captured. For information on submitting your stories, contact nucnews@ans.org.

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pa. In 1959, I received my Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics utilizing the 400-MeV synchrocyclotron at Carnegie Mellon University, involving measuring the scattering of pi-­mesons from protons (as a liquid hydrogen target). I joined ANS in January 1960.

I later joined General Electric’s Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion project to build a nuclear jet engine at the National Reactor Testing Station at Idaho Falls (now Idaho National Laboratory). In January 1961, the U.S. Army’s experimental nuclear reactor SL-1 blew up, killing three army personnel. At first, the Air Force would not permit General Electric to take part in the cleanup, but after the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion project was canceled by President Kennedy in March, GE took on the SL-1 disassembly and analysis project. I oversaw the analysis, which took nearly two years.

The American Nuclear Society, in partnership with the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, is hosting its next Educator Training event, “K-12 Classroom Investigations: Exploring Background Radiation,” this Thursday, May 16, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. (EDT).

Register now. The event is complimentary and open to all.

NuScale Power has announced the opening of its fifth Energy Exploration (E2) Center, at the University Politehnica of Bucharest, in support of the small modular reactor developer’s ongoing collaboration with the U.S. and Romanian governments and Nuclearelectrica, operator of Romania’s Cernavoda nuclear power plant.