Why MPR?

Douglas M. Chapin, PhD, NAE

Douglas M. Chapin, PhD, NAE, is a principal officer and director of MPR, a role he has held since 1985. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and serves as chairman of the National Research Council's Board on Energy and Environmental Systems. During his career, he has chaired numerous studies and committees related to nuclear power plant operations and safety. From 2000 to 2002, he served as a member of the subcommittee of the Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee (NERAC) that oversaw the production of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) roadmap for the near-term deployment program for operation of nuclear power plants in the United States by 2010 and the Generation IV program leading to advanced nuclear power plants in operation by the year 2030. He is currently a member on the Light Water Reactor (LWR) R&D work group, a joint industry DOE activity. He has extensive experience in electrical, chemical, and nuclear engineering, with particular application to nuclear and conventional power plant systems and associated components. He has worked in such areas as instrumentation and control systems, nuclear fuels, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, pumps, advanced analysis methods, test facility design, and electrical systems and components. Chapin has a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Duke University, a certificate from the Bettis Reactor Engineering School, an MS in Applied Science from George Washington University, and a PhD in Nuclear Studies and Nuclear Engineering from Princeton University.

---

Paul S. Damerell

Paul S. Damerell is a principal officer and director of MPR, a role he has held since 1999. He joined MPR as a summer intern in 1976, and, after completing his BSME and MSME degrees at Purdue University, Damerell accepted a full-time engineering position at MPR in 1977. He has worked internationally in the area of reactor safety, collaborating with associates in Japan, Korea, Germany, Sweden, and France on topics such as emergency core cooling systems (ECCS), containment, valves, and other related areas. He was the primary author of a landmark international report (published in the U.S. as NUREG/IA-0126 and 0127), which summarized the results of more than a decade of international research on ECCS performance. Since 1989, Damerell has led several U.S. nuclear industry efforts related to reliability of motor-operated valves (MOVs) in nuclear safety applications. These efforts included a combination of testing and analysis that had to satisfy considerable regulatory scrutiny. He led a program for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) that developed new design tools and evaluation methods for MOVs, the only such methods to receive a generic NRC approval for use in U.S. plants. He also led an effort for the BWR Owners Group to develop design and evaluation methods for DC powered MOVs, once again the only methods accepted by the NRC for use in U.S. plants. Finally, he led an industry-wide program for all of the U.S. nuclear plant owners groups, which developed accepted approaches and methods for periodic verification. All of these efforts produced landmark reports, and the resulting methods continue to be used in plants today.

---

Alex Zarechnak

Alex Zarechnak is a principal officer of MPR, a position he has held since 1999. Since joining MPR in 1968, Zarechnak has worked in a broad spectrum of challenging technical and management areas, leading large-scale projects and long-term improvement initiatives for a variety of clients. Following the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979, Zarechnak helped develop and improve power plant control rooms and alarms systems. Over the last two decades, several nuclear power plants have required significant upgrades of their engineering capabilities especially related to design and licensing bases. Zarechnak, together with others at MPR, has helped most U.S. nuclear plants with regulatory, operational, and/or compliance issues to improve their capabilities and restore credibility with the regulator. Zarechnak also has provided oversight for original technology development and continues to help MPR assist a variety of international clients in developing innovative energy technologies. He has managed multiple-year efforts with foreign utilities in establishing the requirements for the next generation nuclear power plant design. He holds degrees in physics from Princeton University (BA) and University of Maryland (MA), with major concentration in cosmology. His specific expertise includes thermal hydraulics, vibration, structural analysis, licensing, and human factors as applied to nuclear and fossil power plants and their multiple components.