Joseph Hendrie, 98, Dies; Key Determine within the Three Mile Island Disaster

Joseph M. Hendrie, a physicist who led the Nuclear Regulatory Fee in the course of the nation’s worst nuclear energy accident, at Three Mile Island — a mishap that chilled Individuals’ belief in nuclear vitality for many years — died on Dec. 26 at his house in Bellport, N.Y., on Lengthy Island. He was 98.

His daughter Barbara Hendrie confirmed the demise.

An knowledgeable in nuclear reactor security, Dr. Hendrie was chairman of the fee on March 28, 1979, when a industrial reactor situated on an island within the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania skilled a sudden lack of cooling water and a partial meltdown of its radioactive gasoline.

Two days later, on Dr. Hendrie’s recommendation, the governor of Pennsylvania ordered the evacuation of pregnant girls and preschool youngsters inside 5 miles of the realm.

Minimal radioactivity was launched, and there have been no fast deaths. However official miscommunication and lingering confusion over the severity of the menace infected a long-running nationwide debate about nuclear security. Film theaters that yr had been exhibiting “The China Syndrome,” a success thriller a couple of nuclear plant catastrophe. Practically 200,000 protesters turned out in New York Metropolis six months after Three Mile Island for an antinuclear rally.

Dr. Hendrie, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 to steer the Nuclear Regulatory Fee, the federal government company accountable for nuclear energy security, got here in as a proponent of nuclear vitality, criticized by environmentalists as too supportive of the trade.

“My biggest challenge will be to keep nuclear power as a viable energy option,” he advised Newsday, his native paper, when he was appointed. He pledged to finish “the tortuous and Kafkaesque hearings” on proposed nuclear vegetation.

However the president fired Dr. Hendrie eight months after Three Mile Island, following a blistering report by a presidential fee that referred to as for sweeping modifications in how nuclear vegetation had been constructed and controlled.

The report didn’t fault Dr. Hendrie by identify. But it surely was important of the regulatory fee, saying it was “unable to fulfill its responsibility for providing an acceptable level of safety for nuclear power plants.” Mr. Carter stated a change of management on the fee was wanted “in the spirit” of the suggestions he obtained.

Victor Gilinsky, who served on the fee with Dr. Hendrie, described him in an interview as a nonbureaucratic sort, “given to outbursts of honesty,” whose candor may have led to his dismissal.

Within the days after the accident, when requested at a information convention in Maryland about worst-case eventualities, Dr. Hendrie had stated it may be essential to evacuate residents so far as 20 miles from the positioning. Gov. Richard L. Thornburgh of Pennsylvania was upset, Dr. Gilinsky stated, and complained to President Carter. “That’s what forced him out; he was giving his honest opinion.”

Although he misplaced the chairman’s job, Dr. Hendrie remained one of many 5 members of the regulatory fee by means of the tip of his four-year time period in June 1981. In March of that yr, President Ronald Reagan reappointed him chairman in an appearing capability.

He returned to the Brookhaven Nationwide Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., the place he had labored for twenty years earlier than becoming a member of the regulatory fee. Within the Sixties, he had helped design and construct a kind of analysis reactor, the Excessive Flux Beam Reactor, which supplied very intense beams of neutrons. Scientists from far and extensive got here to Brookhaven to make use of it for his or her 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 work force supporting many nuclear related activities, including both theoretical and experimental work,” Joseph P. Indusi, a former colleague of Dr. Hendrie’s at Brookhaven, stated in an e mail.

In 1984, when Dr. Hendrie turned president of the American Nuclear Society, an expert group for nuclear engineers, he advised its publication, Nuclear Information, that he had few regrets about leaving a high-profile authorities profession for a quieter lifetime of analysis.

“On balance, I’m glad to be out of it,” he said. “The stress level is high enough so that it’s a very wearing proposition. You just drain down your internal reserves. But it’s also a very exciting enterprise, and I miss the hurrah from time to time.”

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

During World War II, Dr. Hendrie served 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, 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. She later worked in public relations for the Navy. She died in 2019.

Besides his daughter Barbara, Dr. Hendrie is survived by another 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 verging on panic that the reactor could melt down and release devastating radioactivity. That never came to pass, although the full extent of the damage was not learned until years later, when it was determined that 50 percent of the reactor’s nuclear fuel had melted.

The accident was triggered by a stuck valve, compounded by human error. The result was that not enough cooling water was reaching the reactor core, which led to damage and the release of a “small amount of radioactive material,” according to the Department of Energy.

Several studies of long-term well being results discovered no enhance in a number of forms of most cancers brought on by radiation within the area.

Still, Three Mile Island froze the development of nuclear power in the U.S. for decades. For 32 years after the accident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued no new permits for reactors. Since 2010, only two new reactors have come online, while a dozen shut down before their licenses expired because they were not economical.

Extra not too long ago, new curiosity has arisen in nuclear energy as the most important supply of non-carbon-emitting vitality at a time of heightened consciousness of the local weather disaster. Gallup polling this yr discovered extra help for nuclear energy than at any time since 2012. The Biden administration has directed $6 billion from an infrastructure law to bail out economically shaky reactors, which provide about half of the nation’s carbon-free electricity.