Joseph M. Hendrie, a physicist who led the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the nation’s worst nuclear power accident, at Three Mile Island — an accident that froze Americans’ confidence in nuclear power for decades — died Dec. 26 at home of in Bellport. New York, Long Island. It was 98.
His daughter Barbara Hendry confirmed the death.
An expert in nuclear reactor safety, Dr. Hendrie was chairman of the commission on March 28, 1979, when a commercial reactor located on an island in the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania experienced a sudden loss of cooling water and a partial collapse of its radioactive fuel. .
Two days later, on the advice of Dr. Hendry, the governor of Pennsylvania ordered the evacuation of pregnant women and preschool children within five miles of the area.
Little radioactivity was released and there were no immediate deaths. But official miscommunication and lingering confusion about the seriousness of the threat sparked a long-running national debate about nuclear safety. Movie theaters that year were showing “The China Syndrome,” a hit thriller about a nuclear plant disaster. Nearly 200,000 protesters turned out in New York City six months after Three Mile Island for an anti-nuclear rally.
Dr. Hendrie, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 to head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the government agency responsible for the safety of nuclear power, has emerged as an advocate of nuclear power who has been criticized by environmentalists as overly pro-industry.
“My biggest challenge will be to keep nuclear power as a viable energy option,” he told Newsday, his local newspaper, when he was appointed. He vowed to end “tumultuous and Kafkaesque hearings” on proposed nuclear power stations.
But the president fired Dr. Hendry eight months after Three Mile Island, following a revealing report by a presidential commission that called for sweeping changes to the way nuclear power plants are built and regulated.
The report did not accuse Dr. Hendry by name. However, he criticized the regulatory commission, saying it “has not been able to fulfill its responsibility to provide an acceptable level of safety for nuclear power plants”. Mr Carter said a change of leadership at the commission was needed “in the spirit” of the recommendations he received.
Victor Gilinsky, who served on the committee with Dr. Hendry, described him in an interview as a non-bureaucratic guy, “prone to outbursts of honesty.” whose honesty may have led to his dismissal.
In the days after the accident, when asked at a press conference in Maryland about worst-case scenarios, Dr. Hendry had said residents up to 20 miles from the site may need to be evacuated. Governor Richard L. Thornburgh of Pennsylvania was upset, Dr. Gilinski said, and complained to President Carter. “That forced him to leave. he was speaking his honest opinion.”
Although he lost the job of president, Dr. Hendry remained one of five members of the regulatory commission until the end of his four-year term in June 1981. In March of that year, President Ronald Reagan reappointed him as acting chairman.
He returned to Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, where he had worked for two decades before joining the regulatory board. In the 1960s, he had helped design and build a type of research reactor, the high-flux reactor, which provided very intense neutron beams. Scientists from far and wide came to Brookhaven to use it for their experiments.
“He was one of those rare individuals who possessed a deep technical understanding of nuclear science and engineering and the ability to successfully manage a large and diverse workforce supporting many nuclear-related activities, including both theoretical and experimental work.” , Joseph P. Indusi. a former colleague of Dr. Hendrie’s in Brookhaven, he said in an email.
In 1984, when Dr. Hendry, who became president of the American Nuclear Society, a professional group for nuclear engineers, told its publication, Nuclear News, that he had no regrets about leaving a high-profile government career for a quieter life of research.
“Overall, I’m glad to be out of it,” he said. “The stress level is high enough to be a very wearable proposition. You are simply depleting your internal reserves. But it’s also a very exciting business and I miss the rush from time to time.”
Joseph Mallam Hendrie was born on March 18, 1925 in Janesville, Wis. His father, Joseph Munier Hendrie, was a General Motors executive who moved the family to the Detroit area. His mother, Pearl (Hocking) Hendrie, was a homemaker.
During World War II, Dr. Hendry served in the Army Corps of Engineers in the Pacific. He graduated from the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland (now part of Case Western Reserve University) in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and then earned a Ph.D. in the same subject from Columbia University in 1957.
He met his future wife, Elaine Kostel, an instructor at an Arthur Murray dance studio in Cleveland, on a blind date. He later worked in public relations for the Navy. He died in 2019.
In addition to his daughter Barbara, Dr. Hendrie has another daughter, Susan Hendrie-Marais. grandson? and a sister, Jane Cooper.
In the first uncertain week after the accident at Three Mile Island, there were panicked fears that the reactor could melt down and release devastating radioactivity. This never happened, although the full extent of the damage was not learned until years later, when it was found that 50 percent of the reactor’s nuclear fuel had melted.
The accident was caused from a stuck valve, exacerbated by human error. The result was that not enough cooling water was reaching the reactor core, leading to damage and the release of “a small amount of radioactive material”. according to the Department of Energy.
Enough studies of long-term health effects found no increase in several types of cancer caused by radiation in the region.
However, Three Mile Island froze the development of nuclear power in the US for decades. For 32 years after the accident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not issue new reactor licenses. Since 2010, only two new reactors have come online, while a dozen were shut down before their licenses expired because they were uneconomic.
More recently, new interest has arisen in nuclear power as the largest carbon-free energy source at a time of heightened awareness of the climate crisis. Gallup poll last year found more support for nuclear power than at any time since 2012. The Biden administration has directed 6 billion dollars by an infrastructure law to save financially unstable reactors, which provide about half of the nation’s carbon-free electricity.