Skip to main content

NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan Jr. Dies After Battle with Skin Cancer

By Eric McErlain
Earlier today we heard the sad news that Edward McGaffigan, Jr., the longest-serving member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, had died after a battle with skin cancer. He was 58. On news of his passing, NEI's President and CEO, Skip Bowman, issued the following statement:
“Ed McGaffigan was a giant among public servants, a commissioner who brought great passion and competency to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“Commissioner McGaffigan was a voice of reason determined to assure public health and safety by advocating regulation that is rooted in sound science and engineering. He always voted his conscience, and he earned the respect of his colleagues and staff at the NRC, government leaders, the public and executives in the nuclear energy industry.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with Ed’s family and his co-workers at the NRC.”
For more information on McGaffigan's life, click here for an appreciation from NRC. Last December, Elizabeth Williamson wrote a story for the Washington Post that told the story about how he came to choose a life in government service.
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
Very sad. I will miss his straightforward approach and his struggle against nuclear scaremongering.
September 3, 2007 at 12:54 PM
Anonymous said…
We can certainly honor his last couple of years in struggling against scaremongering, but it is more important to recognize his singular lack of success in effecting the Commission, the Staff and its contractors, and the nuclear industry, who are failing to fight scaremongering.
September 6, 2007 at 10:10 AM
Anonymous said…
Lets also remember Commissioner McGaffigan for "Its time to stop digging at Yucca Mountain."
September 8, 2007 at 12:55 AM
Anonymous said…
Yes. McGaffigan had it right. "Stop digging" is the only correct strategy to support nuclear power.

We don't need Yucca Mt until se need to store reprocessing waste (HLW).

(Unless we find nuclear power is not needed, in which case we can dispose of spent fuel in YM - but it would then be only after substantial decay/cooling from decades of interim storage.)
September 10, 2007 at 11:10 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more