Memorial Tribute to Alvin Radkowsky

Annually members of the National Academy of Engineers decide on candidate members based on significance of their contributions to engineering and also elect engineers to recognized as memorial tributes. This is the tribute written by Milton Levenson for Alvin Radkowsky (NRHQ 1948 - 1972).

Rickover recruited Alvin to be his physicist and arranged for him to go to the Argonne National Laboratory in 1948 to attain proficiency in reactor physics. The appointment at the laboratory was for three years, but Rickover decided to have Alvin come back after two years since his group had already started to function in Washington and he was anxious for quick action. Alvin became then the chief scientist of the program. When Adm. Rickover’s section became Naval Reactors in 1954, both as part of the Navy Department and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Alvin became a joint civilian employee of both the Navy and AEC.

Alvin was responsible for originating and assisting in the development of two reactor concepts for which he was awarded the Navy’s Distinguished Civilian Award (the highest non-military award) in 1954 and the AEC Citation (1963). One concept was “burnable poison,” for which he also received a cash award of $25,000. This concept is important to all nuclear power plants, but it is especially important for navy vessels, because it enables them to operate for years without refueling, even in time of war. The other concept was the “seed blanket” reactor structure, which consists of a highly enriched fuel seed surrounded by a blanket of natural uranium. The blanket generates more than half of the reactor power and has a very long life necessitating only a relatively more frequent change of the seed providing thus for a large reduction in fuel cost.