LAKE H. BARRETT
1278
Tuscany Blvd Office:
phone/fax: 941-445-4873
Venice, FL 34292 Mobile:
240-426-3754
Email:lake@lbarrett.com
Mr. Barrett is an independent consultant in the energy field where he has worked in the nuclear energy and nuclear
materials management areas for over 4 decades. Based on his extensive experiences, he has recently been requested
to explain the Fukushima and Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accidents, their consequences, and future options
in testimony before the US Congress and in briefings to the Japanese Government, universities, federal agencies,
state and city agencies, professional associations, financial groups, industry groups, corporations, and news media
outlets.
He retired in 2002 from Federal service after serving as the former head of the US Department
of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Civilian Nuclear Waste Management which is responsible for implementing the United
States’ programs for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, as mandated by the Nuclear Waste Policy
Act. In that capacity, he reported directly to five different Secretaries’ of Energy as he led the complex scientific
Yucca Mountain Geologic Repository program through the statutory site selection process culminating with the Presidential
site designation and following successful confirmatory House and Senate votes. In this capacity he testified
before the US Congress dozens of times.
From 1985 to 1993, Mr. Barrett served in a variety of senior management
positions in the DOE. He served as the Director of the Rocky Flats Program Office, Office of Defense Programs
(now the National Nuclear Security Agency) where he was responsible for bringing about improvements in the safety culture,
safeguards and security, and environmental protection programs of the Rocky Flats Plant which led to resumption
of plutonium operations and site cleanup and decommissioning. Within DOE he also held senior positions in Quality Assurance; Facilities
Siting and Development; External Relations and Policy; and Nuclear Transportation, and Systems Engineering.
Mr. Barrett served in several senior management and technical positions at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission between
1974 and 1985. He was part of the early response to the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in Headquarters, sent to
the site to assist in the early accident mitigation efforts, and was a member of the early TMI regulatory Lessons Learned
Task Forces. In 1980, he became the Site Director for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, stationed at the
TMI reactor site for four years to address the substantial technical, regulatory, environmental, management, financial,
and legal issues that were hindering site cleanup operations. In that role he was responsible for regulatory
programs during the stabilization, recovery, and cleanup of the damaged reactor; management and offsite transportation
of resulting nuclear wastes; and to be the senior Federal official for social/political/public governmental interfaces
that were necessary to create a stable sustainable accident recovery program.
Prior to 1974, Mr. Barrett
has held various engineering, supervisory and managerial positions within General Dynamics/Electric Boat Division
and Bechtel Power Corporation, where he performed extensive military and commercial reactor power plant design, construction,
operations and decommissioning tasks, including the last refueling overhaul on the USSN Nautilus.
Mr.
Barrett received his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering in 1967 and his M.S. degree in mechanical/nuclear engineering
in 1971, both from the University of Connecticut, and has completed other post graduate business and management curriculums.
He is a registered professional engineer, member of the American Nuclear Society, served on various standard and industry
committees, and lectured at numerous national and international forums. Among Mr. Barrett’s honors, he has twice
received the President’s Meritorious Excellence Award, Secretary Abraham’s Gold Award, DOE and NRC Meritorious
Service Awards, DOE Distinguished Career Award, DOE Special Act Award, and the Congressional Award for Exemplary Service Finalist.
Three Mile
Island Accident Responsibilities
Mr. Barrett was involved with the early response to the Three
Mile Island accident and became the Site Director for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, stationed at the Three Mile Island
reactor site after the Unit 2 reactor accident there.
Initially, during the first days of the TMI accident
he served as a senior technical analyst in the NRC Headquarters Incident Response Center in Bethesda MD. At
that time he was personally involved in technical and management decisions on reactor source term stability, radioactive
effluent control, and environmental impacts. In the second week of the accident, he was sent to the accident site to
support stabilization activities and radioactive release mitigation. After several weeks of accident site duty,
he returned to Headquarters to participate in the initial NRC Lessons Learned and accident response improvement task forces.
The following year, the situation at the TMI site became more complex with the reactor owner, Metropolitan
Edison and its parent corporation, General Public Utilities, near bankruptcy and the reactor cleanup operations
were under increasing technical, financial, managerial, political, and public stress. Because of these challenging
site conditions, the Commission appointed Mr. Barrett to become the Director for NRC programs at the site. He
agreed to move there with his family to serve as the senior federal official at the site and to direct the regulatory
programs until the situation was stable and the head was off the reactor to allow defueling. These goals were
achieved in 1984.
Mr. Barrett spent four years as NRC Site Director during which time he
was responsible of the development of the NRC Draft and Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statements for the Clean
Up; technical and policy approvals for offsite shipments of accident radioactive wastes and damaged spent fuel;
as well as being responsible for federal interfaces with other Federal agencies and State and local governments. As
part of these duties he testified multiple times before Congressional Committees, State and local hearings, formal Commission
hearings, nongovernmental organization meetings, and various other special inquiries. These duties involved substantial interactions
with both the printed and electronic media outlets.
Barrett Containment Entry to Lift Reactor Missile Shields
with Refurbished Polar Crane: February 22, 1984