Submitted 12-19-2009:  I attended the University of Washington from 1967 to 1974. I completed my PhD in Intermediate Energy Nuclear Theory in 1974 and went to Paris for a year to work for the Centre National de Research Scientifique at the University of Paris. I had an office in Les Halls aux Vins, which is on the Seine, just upstream from Notre Dame and we lived in a high-rise at the Porte d'Italie. Then I spent two years in a post-doctoral research position at the institute for Nuclear Physics at Brooklyn College and we lived on the tip of Coney Island. The job market for scientists was negative. That is, when someone died or retired, quite often the position was discontinued. With prospect in academia dismal, I started working as an engineer. I started with Computer Sciences Corporation in Silver Spring, Maryland, doing attitude analysis. It turns out, not only is it important to know where you are in your orbit, you need to know which way is up and where you are pointing.

 

I received an offer to go work on the start-up of the FFTF, which was an experimental breeder reactor. I spent the next 30 years in the Nuclear Power industry in a variety of positions. In fact, I am still a consultant for AREVA and the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. I wrote a couple of dozen refereed publications in scientific and engineering journals, but have spent most of my time working on Nuclear Safety.

 

I have enjoyed being onsite at the Palo Verde Plants. They make 4.2 Billion Watts of power, which is almost as much as the whole Columbia River averages. The pumps that circulate the cooling water take 30,000 hp, which works out to about 26 Million Watts. My dad would have loved the really big equipment involved. We installed (I watched others install) some 800 ton steam generators in all three units there. The lifting and moving of those monsters was pretty amazing.

 

I "retired" to a condo in downtown Seattle in 2001. We live about 3 blocks from the Seattle Center, so I can just look out my window and see the space needle. In 2002, we bought a one-acre lot in Quartzsite, AZ and put up a double-wide there. I have been spending my Winters in Quartzsite since then. It turns out my cousin, David Connelly, stays in Phoenix (about 130 mile drive). He retired from Albertson's several years ago, so we get together every so often. My cousin Marcella (Sue Spainhoward's older daughter) was a nurse at the local hospital in Parker, AZ, and lives nearby, too. We have gotten to see her every so often.

 

My little brother, Gary, attended the U of Washington at the same time I did. I pushed him into giving up his job as a draftsman for Idaho Power and going to work for Boeing. The University began offering a graduate degree in Computer Science, so Gary enrolled in the program and was one of the early Ph.D.'s in Computer Science. He worked at a variety of interesting places before settling in as a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado. He is retiring from his professorship at U of Colorado this year. Our baby brother, Greg, who was born in Prairie City did graduate work at Michigan State University in Physiological Psychology, but decided that he really didn't need the Ph.D. and went to work in the electronic counter-measures field. He was very successful at that, ending up as the Chief Engineer for his company, but decided to move back to Boise and work for HP. His expertise is embedded Linux. After some time, he started his own company and moved to Costa Rica, where he still lives.

 

I lost my mother, Viola, in 1998 to Alzheimer's. My father tended her from the time she became ill until she died some 10 years later. He never left her side, but fed her and bathed her. He died last year on November 7, just a little over three weeks short of his 91st birthday. He loved and missed my mother and his twin brother, Walt, who died in 1975, to the day of his death. 

Bill's email:  drwnutt@juno.com