KNOXVILLE — University of Tennessee, Knoxville is hosting a panel of nuclear experts from the university, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), industry and radiological emergency response to discuss the earthquake and tsunami-caused nuclear reactor accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant near Sendai, Japan. The panel will be moderated by Professor of Nuclear Engineering and UTK-ORNL Governor’s Chair Howard Hall.
A public panel discussion will be held from 6–8 p.m., Tuesday, March 29, 2011. Experts will be available to the media for one-on-one interviews following the event.
The event will be held in the auditorium in the Carolyn P. Brown Memorial University Center on the UT Knoxville campus. Parking is available for a fee in the University Center garage.
The event is free and open to the public.
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck the northeast coast of Japan, followed by a roughly 10-meter tsunami that inundated the coast. Following the initial events, multiple-loss-of cooling incidents at the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant have caused an ongoing crisis. A panel of nuclear experts will discuss the events at Fukushima and field questions.
Panelists will include:
- Jeff Chapman, President of Knoxville Chapter of the American Nuclear Society
- Russell “Rusty” West, VP of Nuclear Operations, TVA
- Lawrence Townsend, Robert M. Condra Professor of Nuclear Engineering, UTK
- Al Wiley, Director of the Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education (ORISE) Radiation Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site (REAC/TS)
- Tom Rucker, President of the East Tennessee Health Physics Society
- Daniel Hollenbach, SpectraTech
- Howard Hall, Professor and UTK/ORNL Governor’s Chair in Nuclear Security
This event will also be webcast live. The URL for the webcast is:
http://160.36.161.128/UTK/Viewer/?peid=125414c34db64c9ab995a592f4fd5fa0
This event is sponsored by the Knoxville chapter of the American Nuclear Society and the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy.