244:. Pigford concluded that the plant, which was being used to make plutonium for nuclear bombs, was less safe than the American commercial nuclear reactors. He rejected safety measures proposed by the department, claiming that they would be no help at all. Immediately after this revelation, the department closed the reactor.
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in Nevada. The EPA eventually decided that the government should have the power to assume how to use the land in the area in future millenniums. Pigford was critical of the EPA for permitting higher levels of radiation contamination in the water supply for farmers because of their assumption that the
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in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The commission reported that certain operators lacked proper training which led them to turning off certain safety systems. With these safety systems off, a simple malfunction turned into a larger problem that destroyed the nuclear core. Pigford was very critical of the
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Pigford married his first wife
Catherine Kennedy Cathey and had two daughters, Cynthia and Julie Pigford. Catherine died in 1992. Two years after the death of his first wife, Pigford married his second wife Elizabeth Hood Weekes in 1994. He had two stepdaughters from his second marriage, Janvrin
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for their technical errors and the alarmist response. "Every technology imposes a finite degree of risk upon society, both in its routine operation and in the occurrence of accidents. The essential question is the trade-off between the risks and the benefits. The commission neither received any
157:. He is credited for having an influential voice in nuclear policy. Pigford was generally well respected by scientists and environmentalists alike because of the expertise he brought to the subject and his objectivity. He was considered a pro-nuclear advocate, but only if done so in a safe way.
202:, he co-authored the book "Nuclear Chemical Engineering" published in 1958 and 1983 which outlined methods that the government used for harvesting plutonium from reactor fuel to be used in bombs. This text was critical because it was considered to be the first in the field. He won the
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exploded and spewed a cloud of radioactive material across Europe. Pigford was appointed by the secretary of energy to a committee for evaluating the safety implementations of a similar reactor in
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and was treated for nine years. He died from complications of the disease on
February 27, 2010, at his home in
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while still completing his doctorate. Pigford helped to establish the
Nuclear Engineering Department at MIT.
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panel in the mid-1990s to help advise the agency on what standards should be put in place for the proposed
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evidence nor reached any conclusions that the risks of nuclear power outweigh its benefits."
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Seven years after the Three Mile Island incident, a nuclear reactor in
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Thomas
Pigford, influential voice in nuclear policy, dies at 87
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Pigford was appointed to a commission in 1979 to study the
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400:Thomas H. Pigford, Nuclear Engineer, Is Dead at 87
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311:John Wesley Powell Award
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275:Parkinson's disease
263:subsistence farmers
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185:Marriage and family
135:Nuclear Engineering
71:Oakland, California
335:2011-10-22 at the
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330:In Memoriam
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