Marvin Resnikoff, Ph.D. is Senior
Associate at Radioactive Waste Management Associates and is an international
consultant on radioactive waste management issues.
He is Principal Manager at Associates and is Project Director for
dose reconstruction and risk assessment studies of radioactive waste
facilities and transportation of radioactive materials.
Dr. Resnikoff has concentrated exclusively on radioactive waste
issues since 1974. He has
conducted studies on the remediation and closure of the leaking Maxey Flats,
Kentucky radioactive landfill for Maxey Flats Concerned Citizens, Inc. and
of the leaking uranium basin on the NMI/Starmet site in Concord,
Massachusetts under grants from the Environmental Protection Agency.
He also conducted studies of the Wayne and Maywood, New Jersey
thorium Superfund sites and proposed low-level radioactive waste facilities
at Martinsville (Illinois), Boyd County (Nebraska), Wake County (North
Carolina), Ward Valley (California) and Hudspeth County (Texas).
He has conducted several studies of transportation accident risks and
probabilities for the State of Nevada and several Nevada counties and dose
reconstruction studies of oil pipe cleaners in Mississippi and Louisiana,
residents of Canon City, Colorado near a former uranium mill, residents of
West Chicago, Illinois near a former thorium processing plant, and residents
and former workers at a thorium processing facility in Maywood, New Jersey.
In West Chicago he calculated exposures and risks due to thorium
contamination and served as an expert witness for plaintiffs A Muzzey, S
Bryan, D Schroeder and assisted counsel for plaintiffs KL West and KA West. He is presently serving as an expert witness for plaintiffs
in Karnes County, Texas, who were exposed to radioactivity from uranium
mining and milling activities. He
also evaluated radiation exposures and risks in worker compensation cases
involving G Boeni and M Talitsch, former workers at Maywood Chemical Works
thorium processing plant. He
recently completed work on several major personal injury cases involving
former uranium mines and mills in South Texas.
In June 2000, he was appointed to a Blue Ribbon Panel on Alternatives
to Incineration by DOE Secretary Bill Richardson. Under
a contract with the State of Utah, Dr. Resnikoff is a technical consultant to
DEQ on the proposed dry cask storage facility for high-level waste at Skull
Valley, Utah and proposed storage/transportation casks.
He is assisting the State on licensing proceedings before the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. In addition, at hearings before state commissions and in
federal court, he has investigated proposed dry storage facilities at the Point
Beach (WI), Prairie Island (MN) and Palisades (MI) reactors.
He is also presently preparing studies on transportation risks and
consequences for the State of Nevada and Clark and White Pine Counties.
In Canada, he has conducted studies on behalf of the Coalition of
Environmental Groups and Northwatch for hearings before the Ontario
Environmental Assessment Board on issues involving radioactive waste in the
nuclear fuel cycle and Elliot Lake tailings and the Interchurch Uranium
Coalition in Environmental Impact Statement hearings before a Federal panel
regarding the environmental impact of uranium mining in Northern Saskatchewan. He has also worked on behalf of the Morningside Heights
Consortium regarding radium-contaminated soil in Malvern and on behalf of
Northwatch regarding decommissioning the Elliot Lake tailings area before a
FEARO panel. He conducted a study
for Concerned Citizens of Manitoba regarding transportation of irradiated fuel
to a Canadian high-level waste repository.
He was formerly Research Director of the Radioactive Waste Campaign, a
public interest organization conducting research and public education on the
radioactive waste issue. His duties
with the Campaign included directing the research program on low-level
commercial and military waste and irradiated nuclear fuel transportation,
writing articles, fact sheets and reports, formulating policy and networking
with numerous environmental and public interest organizations and the media.
He is author of the Campaign's book on "low-level" waste, Living
Without Landfills, and co-author of the Campaign's book, Deadly
Defense, A Citizen Guide to Military Landfills.
Between 1981 and 1983, Dr. Resnikoff was a Project Director at the
Council on Economic Priorities, a New York-based non-profit research
organization, where he authored the 390-page study, The Next Nuclear Gamble,
Transportation and Storage of Nuclear Waste.
The CEP study details the hazard of transporting irradiated nuclear fuel
and outlines safer options.
In February 1976, assisted by four engineering students at State
University of New York at Buffalo, Dr. Resnikoff authored a paper that changed
the direction of power reactor decommissioning in the United States. His paper showed that power reactors could not be entombed
for long enough periods to allow the radioactivity to decay to safe enough
levels for unrestricted release. The
presence of long-lived radionuclides meant that large volumes of dismantled
reactors would still have to go to low-level waste disposal facilities.
He has assisted public interest groups NECNP and CAN on the
decommissioning of the Yankee-Rowe and Haddam Neck reactors, and is presently
serving as a technical consultant and expert witness in NRC hearings on the
License Termination Plan for Haddam Neck.
Dr. Resnikoff is an international expert in nuclear waste management, and
has testified often before State Legislatures and the U.S. Congress.
He has extensively investigated the safety of the West Valley, New York
and Barnwell, South Carolina nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities.
His paper on reprocessing economics (Environment, July/August, 1975) was
the first to show the marginal economics of recycling plutonium.
He completed a more detailed study on the same subject for the
Environmental Protection Agency, "Cost/Benefits of U/Pu Recycle," in
1983. His paper on decommissioning
nuclear reactors (Environment, December, 1976) was the first to show that
reactors would remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
Dr. Resnikoff has prepared reports on incineration of radioactive
materials, transportation of irradiated fuel and plutonium, reprocessing, and
management of low-level radioactive waste.
He has served as an expert witness in state and federal court cases and
agency proceedings. He has served
as a consultant to the State of Kansas on low-level waste management, to the
Town of Wayne, New Jersey, in reviewing the cleanup of a local thorium waste
dump, to WARD on disposal of radium wastes in Vernon, New Jersey, to the
Southwest Research and Information Center and New Mexico Attorney General on
shipments of plutonium-contaminated waste to the WIPP facility in New Mexico and
the State of Utah on nuclear fuel transport.
He has served as a consultant to the New York Attorney General on air
shipments of plutonium through New York's Kennedy Airport, and transport of
irradiated fuel through New York City, and to the Illinois Attorney General on
the expansion of the spent fuel pools at the Morris Operation and the Zion
reactor, to the Idaho Attorney General on the transportation of irradiated
submarine fuel to the INEL facility in Idaho and to the Alaska Attorney General
on shipments of plutonium through Alaska. He
was an invited speaker at the 1976 Canadian meeting of the American Nuclear
Society to discuss the risk of transporting plutonium by air.
As part of an international team of experts for the State of Lower
Saxony, the Gorleben International Review, he reviewed the plans of the nuclear
industry to locate a reprocessing and waste disposal operation at Gorleben, West
Germany. He presented evidence at
the Sizewell B Inquiry on behalf of the Town and Country Planning Association
(England) on transporting nuclear fuel through London.
In July and August 1989, he was an invited guest of Japanese public
interest groups, Fishermen's Cooperatives and the Japanese Congress Against A-
and H- Bombs (Gensuikin).
Between 1974 and 1981, he was a lecturer at Rachel Carson College, an
undergraduate environmental studies division of the State University of New York
at Buffalo, where he taught energy and environmental courses. The years 1975-1977 he also worked for the New York Public
Interest Group (NYPIRG).
In 1973, Dr. Resnikoff was a Fulbright lecturer in particle physics at
the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Chile.
From 1967 to 1973, he was an Assistant Professor of Physics at the State
University of New York at Buffalo. He
has written numerous papers in particle physics, under grants from the National
Science Foundation. He is a 1965
graduate of the University of Michigan with a Doctor of Philosophy in
Theoretical Physics, specializing in group theory and particle physics.
Senior Associate,
Radioactive Waste Management Associates. Management of consulting firm focused
on radioactive waste issues, evaluation of nuclear transportation and military
and commercial radioactive waste disposal facilities.
Research
Director, Radioactive Waste Campaign. Directed research program for
Campaign, including research for all fact sheets and the two books, Living
Without Landfills, and Deadly Defense.
The fact sheets dealt with low-level radioactive waste landfills,
incineration of radioactive waste, transportation of high-level waste and
decommissioning of nuclear reactors. Responsible
for fund-raising, budget preparation and project management.
Project Director,
Council on Economic Priorities. Directed project which produced the report The
Next Nuclear Gamble, on transportation and storage of high-level waste.
Instructor, Rachel
Carson College, State University of New York at Buffalo. Taught classes on
energy and the environment, and conducted research into the economics of
recycling of plutonium from irradiated fuel under a grant from the Environmental
Protection Agency.
Project Coordinator,
SUNY at Buffalo, New York Public Interest Research Group. Assisted students on
research projects, including project on waste from decommissioning nuclear
reactor.
Fulbright Fellowship at the Universidad de
Chile. Conducted
research in elementary particle physics.
Assistant Professor of
Physics, SUNY at Buffalo. Conducted research in elementary particle physics
and taught range of graduate and undergraduate physics courses.
Research Associate,
Department of Physics, University of Maryland. Conducted research into
elementary particle physics.
EDUCATION
University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ph.D. in Physics, June 1965
M.S. in Physics, Jan 1962
B.A. in Physics/Math, June 1959