60 N U C L E A R N E W S July 2012

BY TIM GREGOIRE

CALL IT A case of the master fol-lowing in the steps of the disciple.In June, Michael Corradini took of-

fice as the 58th president of the AmericanNuclear Society, a position previously heldby his former student Eric Loewen, who didhis doctoral degree work under Corradini’ssupervision at the University of Wisconsinat Madison.Corradini, the former chair of the Engi-

neering Physics Department and WisconsinDistinguished Professor of Nuclear Engi-neering and Engineering Physics at the BigTen university, has spent his entire careerfurthering the knowledge of nuclear scienceand engineering, and, in particular, the un-derstanding of nuclear reactor safety. Thelist of articles, publications, and conferenceproceedings he has authored currently fillsmore than 20 pages of his 53-page curricu-lum vitae.Corradini has served as the presidentially

appointed chair of the Nuclear Waste Tech-nical Review Board and as a board memberof the Institute of Nuclear Power Opera-tions’ National Accreditation Board for Nu-clear Training and of the National Councilon Radiation Protection and Measurements.

He also served on the scientific advisorycommittee to the French Civilian AtomicEnergy Agency and on the U.S. NuclearRegulatory Commission’s Advisory Com-mittee on Reactor Safeguards. This is in ad-dition to the numerous public and private or-ganizations he has advised and consulted.An ANS member since 1979 and a Fel-

low since 1990, Corradini has provided alearned voice in the nation’s discussion ofnuclear science and technology matters.Most recently he has served as cochair ofthe Society’s Special Committee on Fuku-shima, a role that has put him in front of na-tional leaders, the media, and the generalpublic to discuss the facts of nuclear pow-er. It also took him to Japan in June to meetwith the Japanese government and utilityexecutives to discuss the committee’s find-ings, verifying and expanding on what hasalready been discovered.It’s a life that keeps him very busy and on

the road most of the year. So when he doesmake it back to Madison, he prefers to spendtime at home relaxing and decompressingbefore the next call of duty. At home, saidhis wife, Jan, he likes to “putter around thehouse and do yard work.” The couple’shome is on a large lot on the city’s west side,and there is always something that needstending. Otherwise it’s dinner at Laredo’s

Mexican restaurant or romping with thefamily’s nine-year-old chocolate Lab, Katie.

Early onCorradini was born in the shadow of San-

dia National Laboratories in Albuquerque,N.M., on August 6, 1952, seven years to theday after the first atomic bomb was droppedon Hiroshima, Japan. It was also the year

The 58th president of the American Nuclear Society is an expert in the field of nuclear reactor safety and a firm believer in the power of facts to evince the benefits of nuclear power.

Michael Corradini: An educational approach

Corradini at age six, in first grade

Profile

the keel was laid for the world’s first nuclearsubmarine, the USS Nautilus.Despite such notable beginnings, Corra-

dini’s Southwestern childhood was, in hismodest view, “nothing spectacular eitherway.” His father had immigrated to NewMexico from Italy and worked as a whole-sale liquor and beverage salesman, and hismother had grown up in Albuquerque. Andwhile Corradini was an only child, he didnot lack the company of kin, as both of hisparents came from large families. Therewere, he said, “lots and lots of cousins.”In Albuquerque, Corradini attended

Catholic school—both primary and highschool—and he says that from an early agehe was drawn to the fields of math and sci-ence, participating in science fairs and tech-nical programs. Coming out of high schoolin 1970, he knew he wanted to pursue aneducation in engineering. “After that, thenext step was how to pay for it,” he said. “Atthe time, there were only two schools in thewhole state of New Mexico that had engi-neering as part of their curriculum, and nei-ther interested me.”So after high school, Corradini set out to

find the right engineering program. Afterconsidering a number of options, he finallysettled on a university that would offer theeducation he wanted and would be afford-able. That turned out to be Marquette Uni-versity, a Jesuit university located in Mil-waukee, Wis., noted for its programs in law,dentistry, and communications, as well asengineering.It was while working toward his under-

graduate degree in mechanical engineeringat Marquette that Corradini was presentedwith a fork in the road to his future—one thatwould lead him to a long and productive ca-reer in the field of nuclear engineering.“In the early 1970s, most engineering

schools were very big on the concept of co-operative education, which means that af-

ter your sophomore year you tended to go toschool one semester, then you worked for afirm in a [particular] area for another se-mester,” he said.For Corradini, the work side of the coop-

erative education equation came down totwo choices: either sign up with a companyworking in biomedical engineering—GEHealthcare was busy making X-ray ma-chines on the west side of Milwaukee—orjoin an electric utility. A growing interest inthe new area of nuclear engineering led himto Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon)and its new two-unit 1040-MWe pressur-ized water reactor plant at Zion, Ill. “Afterthat, the deal was sealed,” he said. “I wasactually there during the startup of the firstunit. That was a lot of fun.”Zion’s Unit 1 went on line in 1973, and

working at the plant gave Corradini the op-

portunity to put the calculations and analy-ses he had learned in the classroom to prac-tical use, doing the actual testing and ex-perimentation needed to prepare the reactorsfor startup. It also introduced him to manyinteresting people from a broad spectrum ofbackgrounds, all involved in the burgeoningfield of nuclear engineering.“A lot of the engineers were new, and

they were not from the nuclear engineeringprograms,” he said. “So you met peoplefrom all the various engineering disciplines,from science disciplines who moved intoengineering, and it was an interesting time,because all of them were very bright andvery hard working.”As an undergraduate student, Corradini

said, it’s difficult to say where one will endup after graduation, but his experience atZion inspired him to go on to study nuclearengineering at the graduate level. So afterreceiving his bachelor’s degree from Mar-quette in 1975—a process that took an ex-tra year because of the demands of the co-operative program that required him to splithis time between working at Zion and at-tending classes—he enrolled in the nuclearengineering program at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology, a decision he saidwas made “partly based on its reputationand partly based on the financial aid that al-lowed me to go there.”It was at MIT that Corradini first became

interested in nuclear reactor safety and, inparticular, the phenomenon of vapor explo-sions. While other students were busystudying liquid metal fast breeder reactors(LMFBR)—the “hot topic” during the mid-1970s—Corradini was asked to work onthis “interesting little project” by his advi-sor, Prof. Neil Todreas. “It was different,”he said, “and I’m the type who likes differ-ent. I wasn’t in with a whole group of stu-

July 2012 N U C L E A R N E W S 61

Corradini celebrates Christmas with his parents, Frances (Fannie) and Giuseppe (Beppe), in 1970.

Corradini greets Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson at an energy forum at the Universityof Wisconsin–Madison in 1998.

dents doing the same thing. I was doingsomething a bit different by myself. I foundthat interesting.”When, in 1977, President Jimmy Carter

withdrew support of LMFBRs and they fellby the wayside, Corradini said he was ableto continue on with his research into thetopic of vapor explosions, which was ap-plicable to light-water reactors.So after receiving his master’s and doc-

torate degrees from MIT in 1976 and 1978,respectively, Corradini continued his inves-tigations into reactor safety, returning to hisboyhood home of Albuquerque to join thetechnical staff at Sandia National Laborato-ries. For the three years he was at Sandia,from 1978 to 1981, Corradini was the prin-cipal investigator for the NRC’s LWR steamexplosion research program, as well as an an-alyst for the NRC’s Liquid Metal Safety Re-search Program and LWR Molten-Core-Concrete Research Program. At Sandia, healso participated in the Department of Ener-gy’s early research into the use of the YuccaMountain site as a nuclear waste repository.

Back to WisconsinIn August of 1981, Corradini returned to

Wisconsin, this time to Madison and theUniversity of Wisconsin, where he accept-ed the position of assistant professor in theDepartment of Nuclear Engineering andEngineering Physics (NEEP). Two yearslater he was tenured, and the following yearhe was promoted to full professor.

Corradini was lured to Wisconsin by thewell-known and respected nuclear engineerMax Carbon. It was Carbon who, in 1958,introduced nuclear engineering studies atUW, and four years later he was appointedchair of the newly formed Department ofNuclear Engineering (later NEEP), a posi-tion he held for a remarkable 34 years, un-til 1992. Still active as a professor emeritus,Carbon was elected to the National Acade-my of Engineering in February of this year.

Carbon, who felt his greatest responsi-bility as chair of the university’s nuclear en-gineering department was to fill it with thebest, most qualified faculty, actually start-ed courting the young Corradini while hewas still at MIT, calling him in 1978 to sug-gest that he join the UW faculty as an as-sistant professor. Corradini, having alreadyturned down similar offers from the Uni-versity of Virginia and Purdue University,as well as an industry job, turned him down.

62 N U C L E A R N E W S July 2012

Corradini and son Nathan on a fishing expedition in Canada in 1992

The Corradini men gather in 2005. From left are Daniel, Stephen, Gregory, Nathan, and Michael.

Plus, Corradini, eager to gain national labexperience, had already accepted the posi-tion at Sandia.Carbon, however, didn’t stop pursuing

Corradini, who came highly recommendedby his MIT instructors. Prof. Norman Ras-mussen of MIT has called him one of the“top 5 percent of all graduate students Ihave known.”One technique Carbon used to lure Cor-

radini to Wisconsin was to invite him topresent seminars at the university. In a 1997interview with UW officials, Corradini re-lated how after one seminar in the fall of1980, Carbon suggested that the comingnew year would be a good time for Corra-dini to make the move to Madison. “By thistime, I was ready to go to a university,” hesaid. “That, combined with Max’s persis-tence and interest, and the authentic ‘fami-ly’ atmosphere that Wisconsin showed,made it an easy decision.”Within the UW family, it could be said

that Carbon was the father figure, but thatnotion took on a whole new and very liter-al meaning when Corradini married Car-bon’s daughter, Jan, in 1998. Aware of theirony of the situation, Corradini said he isoften asked how it happened that he mar-ried his boss’s daughter. It was, he said,Max Carbon’s doing.“The honest to God truth is that we were

set up,” he said. “He basically got us to calleach other. Cleverly, I might add.”It’s a story Jan verifies. “It’s totally true,”

she said.So with her father’s express approval, Jan

moved from her home near San Francisco tojoin Corradini in Madison. Corradini, whogrew up as an only child, now has, togetherwith Jan, seven children, ages 26 to 36.

For two parents with backgrounds in sci-ence and technology (Jan is a former nurse),the Corradini-Carbon children have taken asomewhat different path, with the bulk ofthem having pursued liberal arts degrees.Like their parents, however, they have ex-celled in their fields.The oldest, Stephen, graduated with a de-

gree in history and is now an executive forWhole Foods groceries. Gregory, who has adegree in journalism, works as a consultantfor the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration writing analytical databas-

es. Daughter Renee operated a stationerystore and now works in real estate, whileson Fletcher works for Altrec, an outdoorsports equipment supplier in Bend, Ore.Meanwhile, Daniel, another history major,does youth counseling and social work inMissoula, Mont., and the youngest, Mar-shall, currently works in retail in Madison.The only one to take up the nuclear engi-

neering mantle is Nathan, the secondyoungest, who has a bachelor’s degree innuclear engineering from UW and a mas-ter’s in medical physics, also from UW.Nathan currently does radiation treatmentand medical imaging at a clinic in Lugano,Switzerland.When not traveling in the capacity of one

of his many roles as a nuclear authority andresearcher, Corradini relishes trips to visithis scattered offspring, if only to spend timewith his five grandchildren.

Research and developmentAt UW, Corradini has continued his re-

search into severe accidents and LWR de-sign and safety. Most recently, it was an-nounced in May that he will be working onan $871 119 DOE-funded project to exper-imentally validate an updated containmentcondensation model for small modular re-actors (SMR), which will demonstrate ade-quate emergency core cooling. The work isbeing done in collaboration with principalinvestigator Qiao Wu, of Oregon State Uni-versity, and Jose Reyes, of NuScale Power.As a university professor for more than

three decades and a former departmentchair (Corradini headed UW’s EngineeringPhysics Department from 2001 to 2011),Corradini well understands the need for uni-

July 2012 N U C L E A R N E W S 63

During a 2010 trip, Corradini and his wife, Jan, enjoy the view from Corcovado in Rio deJaneiro, Brazil.

Four University of Wisconsin–Madison nuclear engineering department chairs gather at adepartment picnic in 2011. Joining Corradini (second from left) are, from left, former chairGilbert Emmert, current chair James Blanchard, and former chair (and Corradini’s father-in-law) Max Carbon.

P RO F I L E

versities and research departments to con-tinually seek out the federal grants andfunding that are necessary to continue thework they do. Yet, in this time of con-strained budgets, is the government provid-ing enough funding?“The obvious answer is that you can al-

ways use more,” Corradini said. Yet withinthe last decade, despite shifting prioritiesamong those holding the purse strings, Cor-radini said, “nuclear energy research hasbeen, I think, fairly well funded.” That said,given the recent recession and astronomi-cal federal debt, Corradini sees in the com-ing years a reduction in funding across allenergy sectors, not just nuclear. That meansmore competition for dwindling resources,a process that is “more political than it is ra-tional,” he said. “Let’s just say, when youstart cutting back available resources, vari-ous pieces of the pie fight with other piecesof the pie for what’s remaining.”Going into that fight, Corradini identifies

three priorities that deserve continued at-tention: sustaining the safety and reliabili-ty of current LWRs, developing SMRs, andaddressing nuclear waste and the back endof the fuel cycle.“I would say small modular reactors are

important, but I think sustaining the safetyand reliability of current reactors is actual-ly more important,” he said.While noting the significant progress

made in the past year by the DOE, the NRC,and the nuclear industry to address safetyissues and delve into the lessons learnedfrom the Fukushima Daiichi accident, Cor-radini said he would like to see continuedefforts to improve reactor reliability and ac-cident tolerance. “But that’s an internation-al program,” he said. “That’s not just theUnited States doing it by itself. It is collab-

oration and cooperation with the interna-tional community.”Likewise, in light of the recent recom-

mendations of the President’s Blue RibbonCommission on America’s Nuclear Future,Corradini said, we need to “start dealingwith our spent nuclear fuel.”From his vantage point as a university

professor, Corradini also has a good per-spective on the supply of smart, qualifiedpeople being prepared to fill the human re-sources needs of the nuclear industry. Whilehe admits that the situation was less thanideal about 15 years ago, he said there arenow plenty of talented young people inter-ested in nuclear engineering. This, he added,

has happened pretty much organically, fol-lowing the nuclear industry’s renaissance.“Young people understand where there isopportunity and they move to it,” he said.But it has also gone beyond that, he said.

Now, at most universities, including hisown, in addition to nuclear power, studentsare showing greater interest in the medicalapplications of nuclear science and engi-neering, as well as in nuclear-related secu-rity issues. “All three of these, historically,are what nuclear technology is all about,”he said, noting that all three areas—nuclearenergy production, medicine, and securi-ty—have seen growing enrollments.

Leading through educationIt’s not surprising to learn that as an ed-

ucator, Corradini intends to focus on edu-cation during his term as president of ANS.The importance of education and outreach,he said, has only increased in the wake ofFukushima.According to Corradini, key to the Soci-

ety’s education and outreach efforts is thedevelopment of the Center for Nuclear Sci-ence and Technology Information. “CNSTI,to me, is the pivotal new piece that ANS hasgot to work on so that we properly educateand give the clear facts” to the public, hesaid.Corradini said he sees four core audi-

ences for CNSTI programs: middle andhigh school students, congressional lead-ers, the media, and the general public. Thegoal, he said, is to “get the CNSTI up andrunning, develop programs for all four ofthese audiences, and then, once a programis developed, institutionalize it so that asthe years go by, we continue to provide fac-tual information and improve upon how wedo it.”

64 N U C L E A R N E W S July 2012

Baby Gaia plays with Grandpa Corradini in 2009.

Nap time for Corradini and Katie, the family’s chocolate Lab.

July 2012 N U C L E A R N E W S 65

P RO F I L E

As an example, Corradini pointed to aprogram called “Harnessing the Atom,”which ANS is participating in with the helpof the DOE. The program develops teach-ing materials on nuclear science and engi-neering that are aimed at middle school andhigh school students. Corradini said he feelsthat middle school students, in particular,are the appropriate audience for this pro-gram, as they are at the age when they arestarting to think seriously about what typeof career they hope to pursue.In reaching the general public and media

alike, Corradini sees the importance of co-ordinating with local ANS sections and get-ting involved in local issues, such as withthe Vermont Yankee power station, wherethe local section is participating in educa-tional outreach efforts to provide factual in-formation to the public. “ANS headquartersis really helping the local sections to devel-op materials—factual materials—for thesesorts of outreach,” he said. “Again, anotherfunction of CNSTI.”Likewise, Corradini said that as part of

CNSTI, ANS is sponsoring informal gath-erings at the U.S. Capitol, inviting con-gressional staff to learn more about nucleartechnology and related energy issues. Thesetalks are primarily for the benefit of thoseleaders who do not have backgrounds in en-gineering or science.In his own role as cochair of the ANS

Special Committee on Fukushima, Corra-dini is contributing to the nation’s dialog onthe benefits versus the risks of nuclear pow-er, speaking before Congress and the press,as well as giving public talks around thecountry. Corradini has been particularly sat-isfied with the results of these public talks,and said they have been very well receivedby the people attending them.Many people who show up to the Fuku-

shima committee talks are either ANSmembers themselves or students attendingas part of a school group, Corradini said. Hesaid that the group that comprises the gen-eral public is the most interesting, howev-er, because many people come to the talkswith few preconceived notions concerningnuclear power. For these people, when pre-sented with the facts, “their rational deci-sion making seems to take them in a direc-tion many of us already feel,” he said. “Wedon’t try, or at least I don’t try, to persuadethem what direction to go. It’s just a matterof presenting the facts and seeing what di-rection that takes them.”Corradini was visiting Japan in 1995 dur-

ing the Kobe earthquake, and witnessing theeffects of that earthquake firsthand gavehim a deep appreciation for the degree andscale of the devastation caused by the To-hoku earthquake of March 11, 2011. Forcomparison, the Kobe earthquake was mea-sured at a magnitude of 6.8 and took around

6400 lives, while the Tohoku quake mea-sured 9.0 and, along with the resultingtsunami, resulted in approximately 20 000people killed or missing.“It’s absolutely astonishing how large the

devastation was,” he said. Yet, despite thedamage, he pointed out, no one died as a re-sult of the partial meltdowns of FukushimaDaiichi Units 1–3 or the damage inflictedon Unit 4’s spent fuel pool, nor does currentevidence suggest there will be any substan-tial negative long-term health effects fromthe released radioactivity. “That’s not to saywe haven’t learned anything,” he said.“We’ve learned [a lot] on how to make theplants safer.”Corradini said that it is apparent that the

nuclear industry is “very serious” about ap-plying the lessons learned from the Japa-nese disaster, and that a combination of vol-untary action on the part of industry andnew NRC regulatory requirements willmake plants safer. The question, he said, isdetermining which actions will be volun-tary and which will be required. “That be-comes a very difficult policy discussionthat’s going to have to be talked out be-tween the industry and the regulator,” hesaid. “It’s not something that’s obvious.”It is a discussion that certainly will be

made more informed and insightful throughthe continued expert leadership of MichaelCorradini.