Foreword
To our Don, Professor Olander
It is my pleasure as guest editor to write a foreword to this special issue of the Journal of Nuclear Materials honoring Prof. Donald Olander’s illustrious career over the last four decades as a researcher and educator in the field of nuclear engineering. The dedication above is a suggestion of Prof. M. Miyake and his wife C. Miyake of Japan. The Miyakes are among a large group of former students, colleagues, associates, post-doctoral researchers and collaborators who contributed their work to this issue through submitted papers, reviews and reminiscences of their scientific and personal associations with Don Olander. It is particularly appropriate that this honor appear in the Journal of Nuclear Materials, where he has published so often, and where he has been a member of the Advisory Editorial Board since 1980.
First I should mention that there is no official reason for this issue; Don is not retiring, nor is he commemorating any special anniversaries. He is still active in both teaching and research, and continues to work and contribute as prolifically as always. At the ANS International Topical Meeting on Fuel Performance in Portland, in 1997, a circle of about six former graduate students of Olander at U.C.Berkeley gathered, all of whom were presenting their work at the conference. After catching up on each other’s life and work, we looked around and realized the enormous impact that Don has had on the field of nuclear materials, not only through his research, but also in educating a whole generation of researchers in the field. We then conceived of this issue as a tribute to Don Olander based on the concept that if his students and colleagues contributed a paper on their current research, the collection itself would be eloquent testimony to Don’s impact on the field of nuclear materials. We also invited other nuclear materials professors in the U.S. to contribute to the issue. This issue is organized in three sections, which parallel Don’s research interests in the field of nuclear materials: (i) nuclear fuel and ceramics behavior, (ii) high temperature materials chemistry and (iii) cladding and structural materials.
Don received an A.B. degree in Chemistry in 1953, and a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1954, both from Columbia University, and a Sc.D. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1958 from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, where he worked with Manson Benedict. He joined the University of California-Berkeley as a professor of Chemical Engineering in 1958, and has been at Berkeley ever since, as professor of nuclear engineering since 1962, and as senior scientist at the Materials Chemical Sciences and Molecular Research Division of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory from 1961 to 1994.
In 1976, Don published his book “Fundamental Aspects of Nuclear Reactor Fuel Elements”, which has been referred to as a very general book with a very specific title. Although the book was intended for materials of interest to fast breeder reactors, to Don’s credit, the approach he took was so fundamental and thorough, going from thermodynamic partition functions to fuel behavior, that the book is used currently and all over the world for teaching and understanding different reactor concepts. Brent Lewis of AECL mentions: “This book was the first physical approach to the multi-disciplinary problem of nuclear fuel behavior. Here, normal reactor fuel phenomena were described from a more fundamental point of view rather than from a typical empirical-type approach that had plagued the nuclear fuel industry. In fact, this book has helped train a generation of students in nuclear fuel engineering and is the essential reference book for the practicing fuel design engineer or scientist.” His book is often cited as a reference in refereed journal papers, not as a general reference on nuclear materials, but as the place to find a particular derivation of an abstruse mechanism. It received the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Nuclear Technology from the Materials Science and Technology Division of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) in 1976. K.L.Murty of North Carolina State University mentions that Olander’s book greatly influenced his teaching of radiation effects and microstructural evolution under irradiation, specially the excellent review on dislocation interactions. The book has been translated into Japanese and Chinese, and is used all over the world to teach nuclear materials. Olander’s book is also widely used outside of academia, by engineers in nuclear utilities and commercial companies and researchers in national laboratories. Rosa Yang of EPRI, echoing comments I have heard from colleagues and researchers, calls it “the bible of nuclear materials”.
Don has received numerous awards and honors in his career. He was made a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society in 1984, and received the Twenty Five Year Award from the Materials Science and Technology Division in 1996. In 1983 he received the Sustained Outstanding Research Award from the Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Research. He has received lectureship appointments, that allowed him to travel and collaborate all over the world. He has made lecture tours of Japan in 1985, China in 1982, and Taiwan in 1987. Prof.Imoto of Osaka University remembers that in one of these tours “his three-week stay in Japan gave extremely strong stimulation to Japanese scientists engaged with nuclear fuel and materials.” He was a Lady Davis Visiting Professor at the Technion Institute in Israel in 1987-1988, and had a Fellowship to visit the FOM in Holland in 1972-1973. He also had appointments in Italy in 1965-1966, and two appointments with the Comissariat a l’Energie Atomique in France, in Saclay (1979-1980) and in Cadarache (1997). Dr.Cherian Mathews of the Indira Ghandi Center for Atomic Research writes that Olander’s visit to India four years ago was a great inspiration for his younger colleagues; he also expresses his admiration for Olander’s simplicity and humility, in combination with his extensive knowledge and experience.
Don’s career spans the era of nuclear power. He earned his doctorate from MIT just two years after the first commercial nuclear power plant started in the US, and he has seen the great expansion in the use of nuclear power of the 1960s and 1970s, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and public backlash, up to the present. The pioneers of a research field have at once the opportunity to shape the field and create the discipline, and the challenge of contending with uncharted territory. Certainly few problems have proven to be so daunting and difficult as to predict and evaluate the behavior of materials in a nuclear reactor. In addition to the problems common to other disciplines of operating materials for an extended period of time at high temperatures and stresses in a corrosive environment, nuclear materials work under the unique influence of the high radiation field which can change the material behavior in often unpredictable ways. The chemistry of the fuel changes as fission products and transuranics are created and the fuel is depleted. The understanding of such changes is especially challenging because it is often the synergistic combination of many of these processes that causes the overall degradation of the material. Detailed mechanistic understanding of these processes still eludes us today.
Don has participated actively in the identification and the resolution of several of these important problems that affected the operation of nuclear power plants. The physical difficulty and complexity of the problems he has studied is great because these problems couple nuclear processes, radiation damage, chemistry, heat transfer, thermodynamics and mechanics of materials. He has helped define the problems and has created the methods to solve them. Don somehow always manages to capture the complexity of the problem by focusing on the critical aspect of the problem, identifying which crucial experiment to make, which modeling approach to take, and then presenting the results in clear mathematical language.
During his career he has had so far nearly two hundred refereed publications. In fact, counting the articles he is publishing in this issue he will surpass that number. His research interests have ranged far and wide from the mechanisms of atomic diffusion to macroscopic fuel degradation processes. Among his publications, one can find detailed measurements of basic material properties and complete theoretical models of the work of others. In most of the publications there is a balanced combination of both experiment and theoretical analysis. The article published in Nuclear News following his election to Fellow of the American Nuclear Society in 1984 mentions: “It is in the sustained production of fundamental data on nuclear fuel behavior and in the theoretical modeling based on this information that his work has had a major impact on national nuclear fuel materials activities.” Brent Lewis further illustrates Don’s contributions, remarking that Don has been able with “an ongoing parade of enthusiastic students and postdoctoral fellows” to continually perform pioneering research over the full gamut of fuel conditions, from defective fuel all the way to severe fuel damage, his laboratory often outpacing work performed at DOE laboratories and international laboratories.
Don’s work is so broad ranging that any attempt to classify it likely succeeds only in showing the lack of knowledge of the reviewer. Nevertheless, it is clear that Don has had an abiding interest in the behavior of gases in solids, including the diffusion and solubility of noble gases in fuels, fission gas release and fuel swelling, and bubble behavior in solids under irradiation. He has also had a continuing interest in the determination of fundamental thermodynamic properties, especially at high temperature and in what affects fuel behavior. He has consistently applied his broad scientific and engineering knowledge to the modeling of cladding failures, including corrosion, hydriding, pellet-cladding interaction, stress-corrosion cracking and severe accident behavior. Finally another major thrust of his research work has been the study of surface chemical reactions using molecular beams. Many of these research topics are directly addressed to the relevant scientific and technological problems of the day, such as materials for fast breeder reactors, fission gas source term in the case of core meltdown, radioactive waste disposal, and fuel operation at high burnup. He has also made significant contributions to chemistry, radioactive waste, superconductors and buckyballs, among others.
Don’s impact on the nuclear field extends beyond academia, into the nuclear fuel industry and commercial utilities. He has participated in several key industry and government committees, including the TMI-2 accident evaluation panel in 1983 and the DOE Review Committee on In-Vessel Coolability and Retention of a Core Melt. Another example is the VICTORIA code NRC Peer Review Committee, the results of which review are published in this issue in the paper with V.Mubayi. He has also been a consultant to the Nuclear Fuel Industry Research group (NFIR), which has been successively led by three of his former students. He has recently participated in the EPRI and GE-led fuel industry Task Force on the BWR axial split problem. Some of the key experiments are published in part in this issue. Suresh Yagnik of EPRI describes how Don “was viewed as an impartial and respected technical expert on the problem by all”. Suresh recalls that in 1994 Don was to give a review lecture at one of the key industry wide meetings on the axial splits. Worried that his presentation would be too academic, he “politely asked Don a week before the meeting to give a talk without equations. He laughed but apparently took it to heart, and gave an excellent two-hour technical presentation, with all kinds of practical advice to the industry, without a single equation”.
Wei-E Wang who has worked with Don over the last twelve
years, contributes the following testimonial: “The thing that amazes me the most about him , in addition to his
extensive knowledge in this field (or other related fields), is his ability to
MODEL a physical phenomenon. I could recall many incidences when we were
discussing a complicated physical scenario on Friday and he would pop out a
model full of differential equations to describe it in detail the next week”.
His colleagues cite his warmth and friendship,
and tell stories that express both great fondness and admiration. Several have
described the time spent at his laboratory as among the happiest times in their
lives. Another important factor is his ability to encourage and stimulate work
in others. Peter Hayward of AECL says he “was
originally a little intimidated by Don's rather abrupt manner during question
time at conferences, and by his uncanny ability to spot a weakness in the
speaker's argument and to ask the one question that the speaker was hoping no
one would ask! It's happened to me and
I've seen it happen to many others.
However, once away from the conference hall, Don would be the first to
encourage the speaker and praise the work in question. This ability to stimulate further work in
others is one of his many talents, and makes him such an effective teacher.”
The combination of pointed questions and encouragement is something I am sure all his students can echo. At Berkeley, Don organized weekly research seminars consisting of a series of presentations of each student’s semester work. The seminar speaker for the week brought cookies for the audience, and students quickly found out that (i) one of the packages of cookies should be Olander’s favorite Goldfish crackers, and (ii) one had to be ready to be challenged in all aspects of our research or presentation. It seemed like whenever we tried to gloss over a particular point, that was exactly the one that would be brought out for discussion. One characteristic of Don’s research outlook is his demand for precision and exactness, both in thought and expression. Experimental results need to be explained mechanistically. In one of these seminars I learned the hard way that hand-waving explanations, however emphatically offered, were not acceptable. Somehow, these painful memories are mostly remembered in a context of memories of an exciting time of growth and discovery.
One of Don’s former students, Bob Krakowski, recollects: Professor, mentor, colleague, adviser, inspiration, friend .. these are a few of the descriptors that bubble up with recollections of those Berkeley days well over three decades ago. Don’s approach of giving free rein to work out tough problems while ever-present to suggest solutions when needed, instilled a healthy combination of confidence and independence in attacking seemingly impossible problems. His open and egalitarian approach to student relationships at both professional and social levels, combined with his contagious sense of unbounded scientific inquiry, created an exemplary learning experience that was second to none.”
Don’s courses are always very interesting in that they contain a good cross section of the most up-to-date problems in the industry, usually presented with a simple model that captured the essence of the process. His class notes are very complete, concise and clear, although written in what at first appear to be hieroglyphs. Strangely enough the notes quickly became very readable, as we studied for exams. This ability to read olanderoglyphia has remained with us all, I am certain.
Several of his students have commented on his availability and willingness to discuss their research problems. Nobody could accuse Don of being a hand holder, his students are expected to have some degree of independence. However his door is always open for dropping in, and he is usually available and willing to talk about specific points in the research. He combines great knowledge about the experimental setup and an arsenal of mathematical tools to bear on the theoretical analysis and interpretation of the data. Because of this, his research produces knowledge and understanding beyond data gathering and empirical modeling.
Yeon Soo Kim recalls an experience just after he joined Olander’s group as a student. He was asked to calculate the fission fragment range in steam in the gap of a defected fuel rod. “I gave him an order-of magnitude smaller value and he was apparently happy with that value and seemed to advance with it. Since he was so happy, I became uneasy, because I didn’t realize he would rely so much on it and that was so important. So I went over the calculation again and found I put the decimal point wrong. The distance from my office to his office was less than fifty yards, but to me that day it was like one thousand miles. I confessed I’d made an error and he exploded more than I predicted. After that incident I took care after care before I showed him any result.”
He has received a myriad of scientists in his laboratory.
Several scientists have cited his personal encouragement of their work, either
personally or by letter, as well as detailed criticism and support. Don also
impressed his colleagues in other ways during his travels abroad. Dr.Miyake
remembers that during one of Don’s
visits to Japan he stayed in a hotel near a pachinko parlor, and ended up
spending a great deal of time at the parlor: “I do not know whether he put into practice the laws of probability of
pachinko, but he seemed to quickly take to anything new positively and this is
reflected in his brilliant research.” He so loved the game that he
purchased one machine for his house in Berkeley, complete with the likeness of
the Statue of Liberty.
Hansj Matzke gives the following account of a visit to a
deserted Oxford College for a conference during summer vacation in 1979: “It was getting dark by the time we returned
to our rooms. We wandered around for a
while until we found a staircase that looked familiar. We squeaked and creaked
our way up one more of these dim, narrow staircases when we had an uneasy feeling that we were not alone –
other footsteps could be heard coming closer and closer – but no sign of
anybody ! When we stopped to listen, so
did the other footsteps. Fearing we
were about to come face to face with the ghost of a mediaeval don* we stopped at the landing at the top of
the stairs, and saw a strange face
coming towards us in the dark – it was
a don, but very much alive in the form of Professor Don Olander, the only other
guest in the college at the time! We
had a good laugh about it at the time, and a good conference the following
week.”
Don remains very active in research and teaching, continuing to address the important problems of the field. Some of his current research projects include hydriding of Zircaloy cladding, oxidation of UO2 by steam, ignition of uranium metal in air, and volatilization of uranium from radioactive wastes; he is also investigating a novel fuel concept based on a liquid metal filled gap. He has had and continues to have great impact on the teaching, research and development of nuclear materials, as well as great human impact on his students and colleagues, as attested by these pages.
Don, for the guidance, friendship and inspiration we thank you, for your achievements we salute you, and here are our wishes for a long and continually productive career.
Arthur T. Motta
University Park, PA, February, 1999
Post Scriptum: This issue would never have been possible without the inestimable aid of Pam Koleno at Penn State in helping keep track of manuscripts, writing letters, sending reviews, completing mailings for the Journal, and all the busy work necessary to produce this issue. For her outstanding help and good cheer, my sincere thanks. I would also like to thank Lou Mansur for his encouragement and help. Finally, to all the reviewers who anonymously contributed their hard work to this issue of the Journal, my heartfelt thanks.