B.S. Chemical Engineering,
Lehigh University, 1981
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After studying chemical engineering for four years at Lehigh, I was certain of one thing: I was
not interested in monitoring a distillation column for the next forty years until retirement. My
job search led me to MPR, which I felt would provide me the opportunity to use my chemical
engineering training, and to learn and apply new engineering skills.
I was right; since I joined MPR in 1981, I have worked on a wide variety of tasks, involving such
diverse areas as heat transfer, fluid flow, structural analysis, software development, and
component and system design. I learned many of these skills on the job, side by side with
experienced and topnotch engineers.
Examples of tasks I’ve worked on are listed below. I selected these tasks to illustrate the
diversity of my work at MPR.
- Determining the root causes and recommended corrective actions for failures of power plant
equipment, including piping, valves, boiler and heat exchanger tubes, and pumps.
- Researching methods for collecting halon firefighting agents from leaking fire extinguisher
cylinders without releasing this ozone-depleting gas to the atmosphere.
- Designing a condensate removal station for sootblower steam supply piping at a fossil-fired
power plant.
- Designing and helping to install replacement piping systems at power plants.
- Developing chemical and mechanical methods to remove deposits from inaccessible surfaces in
nuclear power plant steam generators.
- Performing structural analyses of existing and replacement components at nuclear power plants.
The challenge in all these tasks was to quickly learn what was needed to do the job. MPR has a
lot of resources available to make this possible, including a fully staffed library to help with
basic research, and in-house technical experts to provide practical advice and guidance.
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