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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Ho Nieh nominated to the NRC
Nieh
President Trump recently nominated Ho Nieh for the role of commissioner in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission through the remainder of a term that will expire June 30, 2029.
Nieh has been the vice president of regulatory affairs at Southern Nuclear since 2021, though he is currently working as a loaned executive at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, where he has been for more than a year.
Nieh’s experience: Nieh started his career at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, where he worked primarily as a nuclear plant engineer and contributed as a civilian instructor in the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Power Program.
From there, he joined the NRC in 1997 as a project engineer. In more than 19 years of service at the organization, he served in a variety of key leadership roles, including division director of Reactor Projects, division director of Inspection and Regional Support, and director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
Dale J. Merchant
Nuclear Technology | Volume 87 | Number 4 | December 1989 | Pages 1099-1105
Late Paper | TMI-2: Decontamination and Waste Management / Nuclear Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A27700
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
External and internal radiation exposures to workers involved in the Three Mile Island Unit 2 recovery effort are reviewed. The 1979 accident left the plant with several areas with radiation environments that would not allow personnel entries for more than a few minutes without reaching the federal radiation limits. The recovery necessitated many unique tasks never before attempted in the U.S. commercial nuclear industry. Total commitment to the as-low-as-reasonablyachievable principle has helped keep individual and collective exposures acceptably low while allowing the recovery to proceed expeditiously. Since the initial worker actions to stabilize the plant and assess accident damage during 1979, there have been no individual exposures to radiation in excess of regulatory limits. Every individual annual dose since 1980 has been <0.04 Sv (4 rem), and the average annual worker dose has been comparable with the U.S. industry average. The annual collective exposures have been increasing since the initial plant stabilization. The relatively low collective doses from 1980 to 1983 reflect the technical planning and engineering phase of the recovery while conducting initial decontamination and dose reduction measures. Preliminary reactor vessel preparations and actual defueling commenced in 1984 and 1985. The collective doses in 1986 and 1987 correspond to the full-scale defueling and decontamination activities. The actual cumulative occupational dose through August 1988 was ∼53 person-Sv (5300 person-rem), and it is anticipated that <70 person-Sv (7000 personrem) will have been expended for the recovery. These collective doses are within the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s original estimate of 30 to 80 person-Sv (3000 to 8000 person-rem) and compare to the average collective dose for commercial nuclear power plants in the United States over the same time period.