Joseph Hendrie, 98, deceased; Key figure in the Three Mile Island crisis

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 chilled American confidence in nuclear power for decades — died Dec. 26 at his home in Bellport, NY, on Long Island. He was 98.

His daughter Barbara Hendrie confirmed the death.

Dr. Hendrie, an expert on nuclear reactor safety, was chairman of the committee on March 28, 1979, when a commercial reactor on an island in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River suffered a sudden loss of cooling water and a partial meltdown of its radioactive fuel. experienced. .

Two days later, the Governor of Pennsylvania, on the advice of Dr. Hendrie, the evacuation of pregnant women and toddlers within eight kilometers of the area.

Minimal radioactivity was released and there were no immediate deaths. But official miscommunication and continued confusion about the severity of the threat fueled a long-running national debate over nuclear security. That year, cinemas showed ‘The China Syndrome’, a successful thriller about a nuclear power plant disaster. Nearly 200,000 protesters came to New York City for an anti-nuclear rally six months after Three Mile Island.

Dr. Hendrie, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 to lead the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the government agency responsible for the safety of nuclear energy, emerged as a proponent of nuclear energy who was criticized by environmentalists for destroying the industry too much support.

“My biggest challenge will be to maintain nuclear power as a viable energy option,” he told Newsday, his local newspaper, when he was appointed. He promised to put an end to “the tortuous and Kafkaesque hearings” on proposed nuclear power plants.

But the president fired Dr. Hendrie eight months after Three Mile Island, following a blistering report from a presidential commission that called for sweeping changes in the way nuclear power plants were built and regulated.

Dr. Hendrie was not mentioned by name in the report. But it was critical of the regulatory commission, saying it was “unable to fulfill its responsibility to provide an acceptable level of safety for nuclear power stations.” Mr Carter said a change in leadership at the committee was needed “in the spirit” of the recommendations he received.

Victor Gilinsky, who, together with Dr. Hendrie was on the committee, described him in an interview as a non-bureaucratic type, ‘used to outbursts of honesty’. whose outspokenness may have led to his dismissal.

When Dr. Asked about worst-case scenarios at a news conference in Maryland in the days after the accident, Hendrie had said it could be necessary to evacuate residents up to 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the site. Governor Richard L. Thornburgh of Pennsylvania was angry, said Dr. Gilinsky, and complained to President Carter. “That’s what forced him to leave; he gave his honest opinion.”

Although he lost the job of chairman, Dr. Hendrie was one of the 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 again appointed him chairman in an acting capacity.

He returned to Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY, where he had worked for 20 years before joining the regulatory commission. In the 1960s he had helped design and build a type of research reactor, the High Flux Beam Reactor, which produced 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 with a deep technical understanding of nuclear science and engineering and the ability to successfully manage a large and diverse workforce that supported many nuclear-related activities, including both theoretical and experimental work,” Joseph P. Indusi, said a former colleague of Dr. Hendrie in Brookhaven in an email.

In 1984, when Dr. Hendrie became president of the American Nuclear Society, a professional group for nuclear engineers, he told the publication Nuclear News that he had few regrets about leaving a high-profile government career for a quieter life of research.

“On balance, I’m happy to be out,” he said. “The stress level is high enough that it’s a very taxing proposition. You’re just depleting your internal reserves. But it’s also a very exciting endeavor, and I miss the hurray every now and then.”

Joseph Mallam Hendrie was born on March 18, 1925 in Janesville, Wisconsin. His father, Joseph Munier Hendrie, was an executive at General Motors, which moved the family to the Detroit area. His mother, Pearl (Hocking) Hendrie, was a homemaker.

During World War II, Dr. served. Hendrie in the Army Corps of Engineers in the Pacific. He graduated from Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland (now part of Case Western Reserve University) in 1950 with a degree in physics and went on to earn 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. She later worked in public relations for the Navy. She passed away in 2019.

In addition to his daughter Barbara, Dr. Hendrie is survived by a daughter, Susan Hendrie-Marais; a grandson; and a sister, Jane Heinemen.

In the first uncertain week after the Three Mile Island accident, there were fears bordering on panic that the reactor could melt down and release devastating radioactivity. That never happened, although the full extent of the damage did not become known until years later, when it was determined that 50 percent of the reactor’s nuclear fuel had melted.

The accident was caused due to a stuck valve, exacerbated by human error. The result was that not enough cooling water reached the reactor core, leading to damage and the release of a “small amount of radioactive material.” according to the Department of Energy.

Multiple studies of long-term health effects found no increase in various types of cancer caused by radiation in the region.

Yet Three Mile Island froze nuclear energy development in the US for decades. For 32 years after the accident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued no new reactor permits. Since 2010, only two new reactors have been commissioned, while a dozen reactors have been closed before their licenses expired because they were not economical.

More recently, there has been new interest in nuclear energy as the largest source of non-carbon emitting energy, at a time of increased awareness of the climate crisis. Gallup Polls this year saw more support for nuclear energy than at any time since 2012. The Biden administration has led the charge $6 billion of an infrastructure bill to rescue economically shaky reactors, which provide about half of the country’s carbon-free electricity.