Tom Dean
Founder and Board Member, Inventor and Developer
Qualifications:
- Inventor of the Patent Pending Dry Process for the Conversion of Spent Fuel into Uanium Tetrafluoride Fuel Salt for Molten Salt Small Modular Reactors (No. 16/415,692 May 17, 2019 )
- BS in Metallurgical Engineering from Case Institute in 1957
- After 10 years in various nuclear materials industries, including the process development and manufacturing management of Zircaloy fuel cladding, joined Westinghouse Nuclear Div. in 1967
- Was one of four people hired in 1967 to design, build, and operate one plant to produce Zircaloy 4 fuel cladding tubing and 2 plants to produce Inconel 600 steam generator tubing , for Westinghouse and Westinghouse Licensee commercial nuclear power plants. Did the process design for the Zr tubing plant. In 10 years, the Zr4 tubing plant was the highest quality and volume producer of fuel cladding in the world.
- 1967-1985 Manager of the Blairsville, PA, plants’ Quality Assurance Dept., which included inspection, quality engineering, laboratory testing, and product certification Served on the W Power Systems Product Assurance Committee: audited the quality systems of W Nuclear Power Plant Licensees in Japan, France, Sweden, and Spain. President of the Pittsburgh Section of the American Society for Quality Control. Attended many classes in statistics and process improvement at ASQC in Milwaukee, WI.
- Instituted and developed state of the art ultrasonic test systems for steam generator tubing and Zr4 tubing. Worked with W Development Lab to create a high speed pattern recognition outside surface inspection system for Zr4 tubing.
- 1985-1990 Used artificial intelligence and statistical process control at the W Nuclear Fuel Div. Plant in Columbia, SC, to control a 14 interdependent variable chemical process producing uranium dioxide. This reduced uranium dioxide pellet scrap by $4 million in one year,
- 1990-1997 Senior Advisory Engineer at the W Savannah River Plant Used Statistical Process Control in several areas of the plant plus completed special projects for the Div. staff.
- 1997 – till now, retired.