HPS Meeting

Mary Van Baalen

Radiation Safety Officer

NASA/Johnson Space Center

TODAY March 31, 2011
Starts at 7:00 pm

ZACH 119B

·        Mary Van Baalen will be speaking on the management of non-ionizing radiation hazards in spaceflight - Operations in space often require unique and challenging approaches to non-ionizing radiation protection.

·        Food will be provided

·        HPS T-Shirts have arrived and we will sell them at the end of the meeting. They will be $15

Below is a short biography for Mary Van Baalen

Mary is currently the lead for the NASA Lifetime Surveillance for Astronaut Health which is a proactive occupational surveillance program for the astronaut corps to screen and monitor astronauts for occupational related disease. 

In addition to her duties with the LSAH Program, she supports the Radiation Health Office (RHO) in implementing and demonstrating NASA’s compliance with radiation protection policies for human spaceflight.  The RHO and supporting staff are responsible for defining, directing and maintaining a program of radiation exposure management and risk assessment, documenting the radiation exposure history for the astronaut corps, for providing to NASA guidance and recommendations for the interpretation of the risk  from exposures to ionizing and non-ionizing radiation inherent in Spaceflight.  Finally Mary is also the Radiation Safety Officer for the ground based radiation protection programs at Johnson Space Center. 

Prior to her work at NASA, Mary was the Manager of the Radiation Safety Programs at the University of Texas Medical Branch for 13 years.  She is a certified health physicist and a licensed medical physicist in the state of Texas. 

Kevin Dugan
Secretary - HPS

HPS Movie Night

Countdown to Zero

Friday March 25, 2011
7-9PM

ZACH 102

• Come together for a great movie and a fun evening.

·         Interesting movie over proliferation issues pertaining to nuclear weapons

·         Special Note: This movie's conclusion--that nuclear weapons should be abolished worldwide--is controversial and not the purpose of showing this presentation. 
This documentary was selected for two reasons:

1.     The documentary is highly informative and engaging (especially pertaining to nuclear proliferation issues). 

2.     Members of the nuclear community should be able to respond to anti-nuclear activists and the non-informed with confidence

Summary provided by Amazon:

Countdown to Zero traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global affairs: nine nations possessing nuclear weapons capabilities with others racing to join them, leaving the world held in a delicate balance that could be shattered by an act of terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident. The film makes a compelling case for worldwide nuclear disarmament; an issue more topical than ever with the Obama administration working to revive this goal in the present day.

     http://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Zero-Graham-Allison/dp/B00406UK82

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_to_Zero

     http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1572769/

Kevin Dugan
Secretary - HPS

HPS Meeting

Dr. William Marlow

Nuclear Engineering

Texas A&M University

THURSDAY March 24, 2011
Starts at 6:30 pm

ZACH 119B

·         Dr. Marlow will be speaking on how aerosols affect clouds and precipitation.

·         Food will be provided

·         HPS T-Shirts have arrived and we will sell them at the end of the meeting. They will be $15

Below is a short biography for Dr. Marlow

Graduated from Beaumont High School, 1962

    1963 Summer Employment at Bethlehem Steel Shipyard, Beaumont, Texas

    1964 Summer Employment (now called “internship”) at Houston Research Institute on NASA contract

    1965 Summer Employment at MIT  Laboratory for Nuclear Science

1962-1966 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, B.S. In Physics, 1966

    1966 Summer Employment at Corporate Research Labs of Texas Instruments

1966-1973 University of Texas at Austin, Ph.D. in Physics (advisor in Chemical Engineering), 1973

1973-1974 Post-doctoral Research Associate, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel  Hill

1975-1986 Brookhaven National Laboratory, Department of Applied Science 1986-present NE, TAMU

And a synopsis of the presentation

     Cloud nucleation is the process by which aerosol particles under ordinary atmospheric conditions grow when they enter the slightly supersaturated conditions existing in clouds.  Under the right conditions, this growth can result in a small number of particles’ becoming large enough to begin the subsequent growth processes that result in hydrometeor (rain drop) formation.  While its greatest interest is in the atmospheric sciences, the critical elements of a solution of this problem are equally applicable to questions in reactor safety where a supersaturated environment may occur in the presence of an abundance of aerosols.  Since innumerable questions of human exposure to radioactive or other harmful aerosols  depend upon transient supersaturation, the problem of aerosol growth is multifaceted in its  implications for both environmental and reactor safety issues.

     In this presentation,  the physically realistic conditions that must be treated are discussed and the equations describing heat and mass conservation are reviewed and written to correctly describe and facilitate their solution.  The general procedure for the solution and their results are discussed.   These results are next extended to the case of an aerosol embedded in a larger volume intended to represent a cloud parcel which has ingested a limited quantity of background aerosol.  The results are discussed and then used as the basis for describing  stochastic condensation, which takes into account the natural randomness is cloud supersaturation.  Finally, the question of chemical composition of background aerosols is accounted for in some detail.  In selected, realistic cases, we find that such particles can grow to the sizes where they can be expected to participate in  the first step of rain development.

Kevin Dugan
Secretary - HPS

HPS Meeting

Dr. Mark Lenox

Director of Imaging

Texas A&M Institute for Preclinical Studies

THURSDAY March 10, 2011
Starts at 5:30 pm

TIPS Facility (Directions Attached)

·         This meeting will include a tour of the TIPS facility here at A&M

·         This meeting will be off campus; Anyone who would like to attend and will need a ride should reply to this announcement.

·         We are in the process of ordering HPS T-shirts which should be available soon.

Below is a short biography for Dr. Lenox

Dr. Lenox leads the imaging core at the Texas A&M Institute for Preclinical Studies.   He holds a BSE in Systems Engineering from Arizona State, an MSEE from Texas A&M, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Tennessee.   He also has 20 years of experience in imaging, including 17 years at Siemens Molecular.   He was a member of the engineering team that performed the early development and commercialization of Positron Emission Tomography (PET).   Dr. Lenox led the High Resolution Research Tomograph neuro-scanner program at CTI, and was later director of new product development in the preclinical imaging division.   In that role, he was responsible for the design and implementation of the industry-leading Inveon preclinical PET imaging systems.   He holds numerous patents in imaging technology, and has been a founding contributor to several medical imaging companies.  His experience includes all levels of design and implementation of imaging systems hardware and software as well as regulatory approvals.

Kevin Dugan
Secretary - HPS

HPS Meeting

Dr. Dan Reece

Director - TAMU Nuclear Science Center

Professor – TAMU Nuclear Engineering

THURSDAY March 3, 2011
Starts at 6:30 pm

ZACH 119B

·         Dr. Reece will be speaking on a topic to be decided. He has diverse experience working in health physics, analytic chemistry, and experiments involving research reactors.

·         Food will be provided.

·         We are in the process of ordering HPS T-shirts which should be available soon.

Below is a short biography for Dr. Reece

Dr. Reece has over 30 years of diversified managerial, teaching, chemical, radiological, and nuclear engineering experience.  He has experience in analytical and industrial chemistry, including air and waste water sampling and analysis.  He is familiar with current radiation detection instruments, teaching courses in radiation detection.  He has written several general purpose computer codes for calculation of gamma transport (including one used to predict dose distribution in TMI containment after head lift) and codes for beta transport, including VARSKIN, the current method the NRC uses to calculate dose from skin contamination.  In his role as staff scientist at PNL, as director for the Nuclear Science Center, and as consultant to the nuclear power industry, he has firsthand experience in radiation zone work and current decontamination techniques.  For over a decade he has done research on dose to the extremities and doses from "hot particles” and has been engaged in technical analysis of the dosimetry problems of worker handling spatially compact sources or working in other non-uniform radiation fields.  He served on several committees including the NCRP Scientific Committee 86 that is drafting interim guidance for workers contaminated with hot particles, NCRP Committee 46-12 (as a consultant) that issued Report 121 for assessing effective dose equivalent, and served on the PlanCo 59 Committee (Committee within the Health Physics Society Standards Planning Committee) working on Criteria for Performing Multiple Dosimeter Dose Measurements.  He has taught numerous short courses on dosimetry for external radiation.  As Director, he has revitalized the Nuclear Science Center, streamlining operations and focusing the center as a teaching and research facility while maintaining the center as a resource for commercial activities.  As a professor, his median student ranking is in the upper 80 percentile (4.7 out of 5.0) for all courses taught.  He is currently conducting research on detectors to measure neutron dose equivalent in high neutron fluence fields, assessment of effective dose equivalent in nonuniform fields, novel medical uses for radioisotopes, and production of medical isotopes in research reactors.

Kevin Dugan
Secretary - HPS

HPS Movie Night

1983: The Brink of Apocalypse

Friday February 25, 2011
7-9PM

ZACH 102

• Come together for a great movie and a fun evening.
• Interesting movie over the Soviet Union during the Cold War

• NOTE: WIN will not be hosting a social at Fitzwilly’s before the movie.

Summary provided by digiguide.tv:

An extremely powerful program, this documentary focuses on 8 November 1983, a date now recognized as one of the most dangerous moments in the entire history of the Cold War.

On this near-fateful day, a series of accidents nearly unleashed the Third World War. Senior figures in the Soviet Union had convinced themselves that they were about to come under nuclear attack from the West, and the vast Soviet nuclear arsenal of missiles, bombers and submarines were put on maximum alert, ready to launch a full nuclear retaliatory attack on Western Europe and the US. Armageddon beckoned.

This documentary tells the dramatic story behind this sequence of events when Soviet fingers hovered perilously over the nuclear button. The intelligence communities in the US, Europe and the former USSR have never before admitted to the scale of this crisis.

1983 was a time of heightened tension in the Cold War. President Reagan began a huge military build-up, spending a trillion dollars a year on defense spending. In March of that year he openly called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and a few weeks later he launched his Star Wars initiative. At the end of August, relations between East and West deteriorated even further when the Soviets shot down a civilian Korean airliner, flight KAL007, which had strayed over a sensitive military zone near the Kamchatka peninsula, with great loss of life.

To make matters worse, in November NATO began an exercise called Able Archer. This regular military war game rehearsed the process of how to launch nuclear weapons. For the Soviets, who always believed an attack from the West would come in the guise of a military exercise, this was the last straw. They convinced themselves this was not a military exercise but was the real thing. Fingers hovered over the nuclear button as the Soviets believed America was about to launch its missiles against them.

Among those interviewed in this documentary are Robert Gates, deputy head of the CIA in 1983 and now Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration; Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the KGB; Oleg Gordievsky a senior KGB officer but a double agent also working for British intelligence; an East German spy with the code name Topaz who had penetrated the most senior levels of NATO; and senior US, Soviet and NATO military chiefs who were caught up in this remarkable drama that took the world to the brink of Apocalypse.

Kevin Dugan
Secretary - HPS

HPS Meeting

Jay Griffin

Veterinary Radiologist

TAMU Veterinary School

THURSDAY February 24, 2011
Starts at 6:30 pm

ZACH 119B

·         Jay Griffin will be speaking on “MRI History, Basic Physics, Clinical Application, Future Directions”

·         Food will be provided (I’m predicting pizza)

Below is a short biography for Jay Griffin and a Synopsis for the presentation

2004 DVM, Texas A&M

2005 - Internship in Small Animal Medicine and Surgery, University of Tennessee

2010 - Completed Radiology Residency at Texas A&M

2010 - Present - Clinical Assistant Professor in Radiology Special interests:  Neuroradiology 

MRI history, physics and future directions.  The goal is for the audience to gain an understanding of and appreciation for MRI by studying its roots.

Kevin Dugan
Secretary - HPS

HPS Meeting

Ms. Susan Jablonski, P.E.

Director of Radioactive Materials Division

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality

TONIGHT February 8, 2011
Starts at 6:30 pm

ZACH 119B

·         We apologize for the short notice, but please still come out. This will be an interesting speaker who has vast experience in the radioactive materials field.

·         Food will be provided (I’m predicting pizza)

Below is a short biography for Ms. Jablonski

Susan Jablonski is currently the Director of the Radioactive Materials Division at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).  She manages Texas’ regulatory programs for various radioactive materials licensing and underground injection control (UIC) permitting and authorizations.  Specific programs under her direction are as follows:  the disposal of commercial radioactive waste, including low-level radioactive waste, by-product material and NORM; source material (uranium) recovery; commercial radioactive waste storage and processing; and Class I, III, and V UIC wells.  Susan is a health physicist and a professional engineer.  She has extensive experience working with environmental and radiological monitoring, radiochemistry, environmental engineering, waste characterization, and the management and disposal of radioactive material.  She previously served as the Director of Health Physics of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority until transferring to the TCEQ. 

Susan received her undergraduate degree in Radiological Health Engineering administered by the Texas A&M University Nuclear Engineering Department and her graduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin in Environmental Health Engineering.  She has testified in legal proceedings as an expert witness and has served as a liaison and resource witness to the Texas Legislature and the United States Congress.  She serves as the TCEQ Radiation Program Officer to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.  She has been designated by the Governor as the Texas representative on the national Low-Level Radioactive Waste Forum.  In 2009, Susan received the Elda E. Anderson Award from the Health Physics Society and the Richard S. Hodde Award in recognition of her work in radiation protection and innovations in the management of low-level radioactive waste.

Telephone:  (512) 239-6466

Electronic mail address: sjablons@tceq.state.tx.us

Kevin Dugan
Secretary - HPS

HPS Movie Night

Trinity and Beyond

Friday January 28, 2011
7-9PM

ZACH 102

• Come together for a great movie and a fun evening. Come out for either event or both.
• Interesting movie about the tests done in New Mexico. I have heard good reviews from persons who have watched it.

• WIN will be meeting at Fitzwilly’s (303 University) 5:30-6:30, before the movie. We will move over to Zachary from Fitzwilly’s

Summary provided by IMDb:

A documentary presenting mankind's most ambitious effort at perfecting the means to its own annihilation. Featuring newly unclassified atomic test footage.

Kevin Dugan
Secretary - HPS