Interview with Jack Fix

Interview with Jack Fix

Hanford Site (Wash.)

Jack came to the Hanford site in 1969 as an intern and built his career at Hanford labs. He received an AEC Fellowship and worked with thermoluminescent dosimetry. Ultimately expanded the field of Medical Radiation Physics.

Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities

Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities.

03/30/2017

Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.

video/mp4

The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to the US Department of Energy collection.

Robert Franklin

Jack Fix

Washington State University Tri-Cities

Robert Franklin: Are you ready, Jack?
Jack Fix: Mm-hmm.
Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Jack Fix on March 30, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be talking with Jack about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?
Fix: Well, my full name is John James Fix. That’s J-O-H-N. J-A-M-E-S. And then F-I-X.
Franklin: Okay. Great. But you prefer to go by Jack, correct?
Fix: Yes. My dad’s name was John, so I’m a Jack.
Franklin: Okay, to alleviate confusion?
Fix: Yeah.
Franklin: Right, okay. Great. Well, tell me how and why you came to the Hanford Site.
Fix: Well, I first came here as part of a—well, as a little bit of background, I was very fortunate to get a—when I graduated out of college, I was extremely fortunate to receive one of the Atomic Energy Commission fellowships. So I had to take the Graduate Record Exam advanced test, which I took in physics, and then get three professors—they willingly sent in these letters. Just remarkably, it was a gift of a lifetime to receive one of these fellowships.
As part of that fellowship, there were various institutions throughout the United States that supported these fellowships. In the Northwest, the only one was University of Washington. Oregon State didn’t have it at that time, or I would’ve gone there. But anyway, I went to University of Washington and sat—in the summer after I finished my first year of grad school, we had to go to a national lab. And I chose Hanford. So I came here as a summer, I guess, intern, if you would call it that, in 1969.
Franklin: And why did you choose Hanford?
Fix: Well, because I was born and raised in Pendleton, Oregon and that was close to home. And, you know, there were lots of reasons to stay as close to home as you could if you didn’t have a lot of money. That’s also why I chose University of Washington, because it was the closest university to Pendleton, basically.
Franklin: Okay. And what did this AEC fellowship cover?
Fix: Well, it covered everything. They paid—it was a full ride fellowship. They paid all your tuition, they gave you a stipend. I mean, it was really a—it’s hard to imagine how much of a gift that really was.
Franklin: Oh, yeah, I bet. And this was for graduate school.
Fix: That was for graduate school, right. This is called the Atomic Energy Commission fellowships, and they were certainly very valuable.
Franklin: Right, I bet that looks pretty good, too, on a CV after graduating.
Fix: Well, yeah, except intriguingly, most people don’t realize, but after the United States landed a person on the moon, they didn’t have that need for all those high PhD physicists anymore, so many of those people got laid off and they all went back and were retraining into like medical radiation physics and things, which is actually where I got my degree, is in medical radiation physics. So things ebb and flow. So when I graduated with my master’s degree in medical radiation physics, it was still very challenging to get a position. I was fortunate that I had worked two years at the University of Washington as a—
You know, I don’t want to get too detailed here, but my graduating class from college was the first graduating class that would no longer have student deferments for graduate school because of the Vietnam War. Those were all—that was the very first year. So it affected many people. And then later they introduced the lottery system. So I had a low number. So I actually had to stop my graduate studies. And I was very lucky to get a position at the University of Washington, because I was going to be drafted. There was really no opportunity for me to go into the service to get more training or what-have-you. So anyway, it was just a point of history that affected a lot of people. I don’t know how many people, and I don’t know how many people are familiar with that. Hopefully it’s never repeated.
Franklin: Yeah, that would be nice. Is medical radiation physics similar to health physics?
Fix: Yeah, it’s very—it’s excellent, yeah, medical is really all part of radiological sciences. It all deals with radiation, it all deals with—radiological science is actually a very broad field, really. It can go from, you know, cosmic radiation to what heats the core of the Earth, to the various types of uses of medical isotopes in medicine. So it’s a very broad field.
Franklin: Sure, sure. What did you do that first time at Hanford Lab in the late ‘60s?
Fix: Well, in ’69, when I was here as an intern? We, first of all, there was dedicated people on the staff here that supported things, so we had a lead scientist that I reported to. Actually, I reported to Ron Kathren, who many of the people know here locally.
Franklin: I know Ron very well.
Fix: Yes. Well, Ron Kathren was my sponsor. He sponsored me and another student from the east—from the Tennessee area. So we did all various types of educational things, such as—I don’t recall now—but we did a little bit of work with tritium, as I recall. We were doing things with an area called thermoluminescent dosimetry, which is a little special types of salt crystals which will luminesce when they’re irradiated with different types of radiation.
Franklin: Is that the type of stuff that’s in a scintillator? Is that what it’s called?
Fix: Well, a scintillator—scintillation is used in like, sodium iodide detectors for radiation and that. It’s very similar. One’s luminescence and one’s scintillation. It’s both emitting light that’s counted by a photo tube and you can relate that to the amount of radiation and the type of radiation. But the right type--
Franklin: What was the—oh, sorry.
Fix: Well, it just depends on the instrumentation, that’s all.
Franklin: What’s the impetus to develop that type of counter?
Fix: Well, you’re always trying to be able to do things more precisely, at greater sensitivity. So, there’s always been impetus to have better detectors, more sensitive, better resolution. It goes on even to the current time. That’s one reason why they maybe use liquid nitrogen to cool the crystals down, so that there’s less entrancing noise. So it all has to do with the improved capabilities.
Franklin: Interesting. And what was tritium used for?
Fix: Well, tritium is very widely used. First of all, it is an isotope of water. So tritium is extensively used, especially in medical research, because most/many organic molecules include tritium—include, not tritium, excuse me—include hydrogen. So you can have like tritiated label thymidine, all the different amino acids for the DNA. Many. There’s so many uses it’s hard to describe them all, in terms of medical research.
Franklin: Okay. Would that be for like marking DNA so that it would be visible?
Fix: Well, actually, if you wanted to label an organic compound that’s used in some type of, say, like a hormone or an enzyme that’s used in the body, you could potentially use this to label it. I mean, other nuclides that were widely used were iodine and carbon. There was many, many applications for these.
Franklin: What was tritium being studied for at Hanford labs?
Fix: Well, another use of hydrogen and tritium—I wouldn’t say that these were studied at Hanford labs, per se. I was taking that as a general question. At Hanford another significant use of tritium was in thermonuclear weapons. The fusion device utilizes tritium. As a matter of fact, all of our nuclear armaments to this day have to be maintained to keep the supply of the use of tritium in those devices, which has a half-life of about 12.5 years, to be adequate for their intended use.
Franklin: Okay. And so what were you doing in regards to tritium?
Fix: Well, we were, with Ron, we were just studying. I forget what we were doing now. I mean, it’s—this was 40 years ago.
Franklin: Sure, sure.
Fix: First of all, tritium is a relatively—one thing in the use of a student is, tritium is relatively non-hazardous. It’s a very low-emitting beta emitter. Very low. So it’s relatively—it’s not very hazardous. So if you’re teaching students, that might be attractive. It’s also easily available. And so.
Franklin: You said easily available, so it was being produced at Hanford, then, for research use, or where did the tritium come from?
Fix: Well, I’m not sure where the—certainly, there was a lot of tritium available at Hanford; there’s no question about that. Whether it was being purified and isolated for use by others, I’m not sure right now. I’d have to think about that.
Franklin: Sure, sure, and—
Fix: Tritium—
Franklin: Oh, sorry.
Fix: Undoubtedly, tritium was everywhere at Hanford, as you know. The groundwater plume has tritium in it. It was an isotope that’s widely available. Also, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the history of nuclear atmospheric testing and nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, but there was tritium all over the world caused by nuclear weapon testing in the atmosphere.
Franklin: Right. And that’s one of the things that health physicists or others, medical researchers could use to monitor people, because everyone of a certain generation had so much tritium in them, right?
Fix: Yeah, I wouldn’t use the words “so much,” but they certainly—since it was not a relatively hazardous nuclide, but everybody had, certainly, measurable quantities.
Franklin: Yeah, sorry, I guess I meant so much as to be measured.
Fix: Yeah. And interestingly, later on, I’ll describe, but when I eventually became an employee at Hanford, we documented—since when I came here in 19—let’s see, I came here—after I graduated from the University of Washington, I actually went to work for AEC, Atomic Energy Commission, at the national reactor testing station in Idaho.
Franklin: Okay.
Fix: And there, I was responsible for the environmental surveillance program in the context of analyzing—looking after, gathering the data, which was—these were well-established programs that every major DOE site had—at that time AEC site. So I was just one person in a series of people that had these responsibilities.
But my position was responsible for analyzing all the data and writing the annual report. So we wrote these reports and distributed to all the state and representatives and different AEC sites. These were required; there was a DOE order that specified what had to be included, so we did that. And also, when I was at Idaho, we had NOAA was responsible for atmospheric dispersion—the National Oceanographic and Aeronautics Agency. And they also had the USGS, the United States Geological Service, responsible for the geohydrology of the Idaho site.
So a couple years later, I came to Hanford and basically assumed the same responsibilities. I came here to do the site wide environmental surveillance program for the surface. And basically at that time, because many of the Hanford facilities had been shut down, the once-through reactors were closed down in the late, like ’68 or so. And worldwide fallout had, by that time, an international pact to stop the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. So you could see in the environment, very quickly, this decrease in radioactivity, primarily from fallout.
Franklin: Right.
Fix: But near a site like Hanford, there was also the Hanford contribution. Because there’s quite a difference in the nuclide mix between weapons and at Hanford, which involved reactor effluence. So when we came here, the environmental data, meaning foodstuffs, air, water, you know, wildlife, anything that you could measure that might have importance to people was monitored, had been monitored for years. And has continued to be monitored for years since then.
But anyway, when I came here the environmental measurements had gotten to the point where you really couldn’t measure much in the environment. So when I came here, I kind of adopted the techniques that were used at Idaho in which everything was calculated. You would take the effluent data and you’d take dispersion models and calculate what the off-site impact might be. And then you would verify that with the environmental data. So if you calculated minimal impact and then you didn’t see anything with the environmental program, then you felt very comfortable. But, so anyway, Hanford researchers that had these capabilities for using dispersion models, models, et cetera.
So we wrote a series of reports, how the radioactivity in foodstuffs, wildlife, the river, how all that varied with time, and how it was declining. And one of the examples was tritium in the river. We wrote a report showing how that had changed since they had all this data. So we wrote a series of historical reports.
Franklin: How were these reports received by both inside the kind of DOE/AEC complex, but also outside?
Fix: I think they’re fine. I think everybody really appreciated it. I think, for one thing, it was very instructive to see how quickly it had changed.
Franklin: You mean, quickly from the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty to—
Fix: , Yeah, right.
Franklin: Okay.
Fix: Yeah. It was very—and I think it was—there are lots of very interesting things in this data. I guess, being a technocrat, we like data. We love to analyze data. But most people don’t realize, for example, that, say, milk from the western side of the state, Seattle area, had twice the levels of strontium-90, as, say, this area, even though we had Hanford.
Franklin: And why is that?
Fix: And the reason is because worldwide fallout was predominantly following the pattern of rainfall. So the areas that had more rainfall had more radioactive—had more nuclides from worldwide fallout. And the same thing was true of cesium-137, say, in deer meat, or cattle, what-have-you. But their levels of cesium from worldwide fallout was higher where there was more rainfall.
So, anyway, the data that Hanford collected, the contractors at Hanford collected for the AEC, included all of this information. So we included in some of our reports, but it was just a snapshot. What we did was kind of interesting, because things were changing. Everything was going down. And there was some new techniques of analyzing data that we found very—we really wanted to apply this data where we were looking at everything in terms of distribution, statistical distributions. Because you would expect, say, like, particle size of dust particles in the atmosphere would follow a certain distribution. So you can use this method of analysis to see, maybe, what type of—how much of, say, like, a particular nuclide that might exist in the atmosphere and in the environment from different sources, how much might be due to worldwide fallout, how much might be due to Hanford. It was particularly useful for data that might have significant amount of information below detection level. So we were applying these methods and the reports are publicly available and we enjoyed writing them.
Franklin: So would you say, then, that for the west side, or for people in areas of high rainfall, would you say, then, that the threat that they faced from radioactive isotopes was more from the testing than from the Hanford production from effluent going into the Columbia River?
Fix: Well, I wouldn’t want to characterize it in terms of threat or risk, because, you know, the evidence is that low levels of radiation may not be hazardous. That’s a very—that’s an open—
Franklin: Are you talking about, like, Tony Brooks’—
Fix: Well, Tony Brooks, but, I mean, in general, the evidence is that, for example, when you go to the dentist to get your dental x-rays, do you worry about the radiation you’re getting? Or if you’re taking a trip to Europe on an airplane, are you worried about a small amount of dose?
Franklin: Well, no, of course, but a nuclear reactor represents, you know, I think, a sociocultural fear factor there.
Fix: Well, I think that’s true, a social fear factor. I agree with you; there’s a lot of fear. I guess, in my mind, I’m always focused on how much dose is involved, because—
Franklin: Sure, because that’s the measurable quantity, right, it’s not—the fear—
Fix: Yeah. And actually, that’s why the amount of radionuclides that were becoming prevalent in the environment, it’s why there was worldwide outcries about continuing the nuclear weapon testing in the atmosphere and what led to the worldwide ban on atmospheric testing. Even after they had the testing agreement, there still continued to be some testing in the atmosphere by certain nations.
Franklin: Right, more of rogue nations.
Fix: Yeah. Well, rogue and even some very—yes. For a long time. And actually in the environmental programs, one of the interesting sidelights or aspects of these environmental programs, whenever there was a test in the atmosphere, we could pick it up very quickly. That was another use of this type of analysis we were talking about. We could pick it up very quickly, and actually at that point, those particular data we would kind of go on to a different program, because people wanted to know what we were seeing. And I don’t think it constituted a hazard or anything per se, but it was meaningful to—it was meaningful information.
Franklin: Sure, sure. And it’s an important point you bring up that people are exposed in many everyday, what we think of as kind of everyday activities.
Fix: Yes.
Franklin: And that we not to worry about those, because I think we’ve categorized those as necessities, you know. And this is, we view, I think, weapons production maybe in a different light.
Fix: Well, I think we all agree that we don’t want to take unnecessary risks. But interestingly, like, probably the nuclide that contributes more dose, significant dose to humans from all is potassium-40. You know, that’s a primordial radioactive nuclide that’s been there since the beginning of the Earth—or, time, I should say. And it has a very energetic gamma radiation of 1.46 MeVs. It’s very, very penetrating. And yet it’s unavoidable. Anytime you have a banana, there’s no way to avoid the potassium-40. That is a part of the potassium that we all take in. So there’s no way to avoid it.
Franklin: Unless you stop eating bananas.
Fix: Well, I think, yeah, but I think the amount of potassium in your body is primarily regulated by the body. If you get too much potassium, it gets eliminated. If you don’t get enough, it starts taking more of it, absorbing more of it. So, potassium, you can’t live without potassium.
Franklin: Sure, sure, sure. I was also being facetious.
Fix: Well, you know, but these are the games that—I don’t know, “games,” but the perspectives that you have to weigh in.
Franklin: Sure. Well, I want to go back a little bit earlier, when you said that when you first got to Hanford, you couldn’t measure much of the environment? And why was that? I’m wondering if you could discuss that challenge.
Fix: Well, because all of the reactors at that time, once-through reactors, were closed down in the late ‘60s. The reprocessing facility was, I think, PUREX was—I forget its exact operating history, but it was being phased out. So it just wasn’t that many releases from Hanford. We certainly could measure some of the residual. The design of these surveillance programs was always to compare near versus far, upriver versus downriver, to do all sorts of sensible things, to try to see what impact there could be on the environment.
Franklin: And where things were going—
Fix: Yes.
Franklin: --from, once they were created.
Fix: Yeah. And for example, there was, of course, the history of the deposition of nuclides in the Columbia River, say, in the sediment behind McNary Dam. So we were always—at that time we were always trying to develop more sensitive methods, since things were—since you don’t really want to have data that has below detection level. That really is not—that’s really very difficult data to analyze.
Franklin: Sorry, so, I’m a historian, not a—my last science class was a little bit ago. How do you have data “below detection level”?
Fix: Well, if you can’t measure it with your method of analysis, then we just call it below detection level. Everything has a noise level, and if you just can’t discern a signal, you just call it below detection level. You can define what the detection level is.
Franklin: So you’re saying that if you know that there is a very small amount of that element there, but you can’t detect it because of background radiation or something, then you would just say—
Fix: Or noise in the instrumentation. You know, things are not perfect. Typically, if you, say, take a measurement, and you didn’t put any sample in there, you would have a reading. And historically, yeah, a person might say, the detection level is twice the variability of background that you get in the instrument with nothing in there.
Franklin: Okay.
Fix: So you might say, well, I can’t detect anything below that, because that’s just background.
Franklin: So unlike a scale, you can’t just tare it out to zero and get a clean reading every time.
Fix: Right, that’s right.
Franklin: It’s always—okay.
Fix: Everything has tradeoffs. So what you try to do is you try to either concentrate the material, or you try to combine samples. Like if we’re measuring levels of radionuclide in the air using air filters, they have a certain efficiency. What you might do is start to combine—this actually was done at Hanford, where, like, you’d have the routine samples for every month, for example, or in some cases every week, and then you might take all of them for a whole quadrant that you want to and ash them all on a quarterly basis so you get more information—
Franklin: More data into it.
Fix: More data, or more if you were collecting a certain isotope, you’d get more of that isotope and so you’d have to—then that would enhance your detection level. Because detection level, at least, would typically be measured on how much air you sampled, versus how much radioactivity you counted.
Franklin: So you might need to add multiple samples up in order to get something—
Fix: Right, and that actually was commonly done to get to greater detection levels. Like, say you wanted to measure plutonium in the atmosphere, for example, which does exist. So there were always techniques. Or using totally different technologies. Like, we went to filter resin sampling of the Columbia River water, because it was a much more efficient method of analyzing. You could analyze a lot more water with it.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Fix: So I used all sorts of techniques to try to get positive data. But at some point, you have to weigh, what is the underlying risk in the first place?
Franklin: Sure. What other kinds of challenges did you face in gathering this data and writing reports about it?
Fix: Well, in those—I think—well, the primary challenge is you want to be sure that your surveillance program doesn’t have any—is not possible to miss anything. That’s probably the first and foremost. But I had joined a very mature program here that they had been conducting this program for many years, and I was just one person in a line of people that had these responsibilities. You had to be sure that you interpreted the data accurately, as well.
Franklin: Sure.
Fix: So I think it was a very well-run program and everything went together very smoothly. Every site had these programs. So I did that for several years, and then I was transferred to the dosimetry program.
Franklin: Was there a lot of communication between sites in these programs?
Fix: Oh, sure, yeah. A tremendous amount. Yeah, all throughout all my years of these—that’s one of the most enjoyable things about these programs, is since they were programs that were run to meet AEC or DOE orders, they had to be done by a certain time. They had to cover certain subjects. But, yes, we communicated with other colleagues at other sites all the time.
Franklin: Great. One last question about the surface environmental program. Were you, and if so, how, were you impacted by the growing environmental movement in the United States from the creation of the EPA and that kind of growing environmental concern in the general public?
Fix: Well, I would say—I wouldn’t call us being impacted, I’m thinking most of all my colleagues were highly supportive. I mean, we all really wanted the data and certainly, I don’t think anyone was in favor of nuclear testing in the atmosphere. But I mean it’s all really—I mean, that’s way before EPA. I don’t—I guess I never really thought about it, because so much of EPA’s focus has nothing to do with radioactivity. So we’re kind of a small aspect of that.
Franklin: Or, I guess, were you impacted by the growing anti-nuclear movement?
Fix: Oh sure. Sure. Oh, sure. I was impacted, you know, employment-wise. You always wondered why, say, nuclear power couldn’t have been more, as a technology, couldn’t have been more fault-free, let’s say. It just had a few accidents, but the accidents were so significant. Because basically all you’re doing is using the nuclear to heat the water that goes, and the steam drives a turbine. Same thing you do with coal or natural gas or what-have-you. So, like, when I was at the national reactor testing station, we had many reactors there. Because, say, like the Army wanted to have small portable or remote reactors, because you could fuel them, put them in, say, the Arctic Circle, they’d run for years and years, and could be maintained by just a couple people.
Franklin: Right, you wouldn’t have to keep trucking in fuel.
Fix: Right, you wouldn’t have to ship in, wouldn’t have to have—yeah. It’s totally different dynamics, in terms of the tactical aspects of maintaining the facility. The same reason, or similar reason why you have the nuclear submarines.
Franklin: Right.
Fix: Nuclear-powered submarines.
Franklin: So tell me about the occupational external dosimetry program.
Fix: Well, after I had spent about five years in the environmental program here, then it was common practice there of my management to transfer professionals to other disciplines. So I think in about December of ’79 or so, I started here in ’74, and then ’79 I was transferred to the site-wide personnel dosimetry program. And that was very interesting, because, whereas the environmental surveillance program is kind of somewhat removed from operations, we kind of always gathering data, even though we write the official reports of the impact and everything, it’s kind of like after-the-fact.
When I went to the external dosimetry program, we were really a part of the operation. We were a part of what would happen with, you know, doses where people actually working, say, yesterday, if we had a significant job, versus— And even though there I was primarily responsible for the dosimetry that would determine the official dose of record. We were responsible for the nuclear accident of personnel dosimetry. And actually interestingly we did the environmental dosimetry as well at that time. Because it was all part of the same type of technology.
Franklin: And was this site-wide?
Fix: Yes, site-wide.
Franklin: Okay, so for every Hanford employee.
Fix: Every Hanford employee. Everybody, both employees and visitors to the Site, all were required to wear dosimetry, and it served everybody. This is a program that, of course, had started with the very beginning of Hanford operations in the ‘40s, ’43, ’44 or whatever it was. And through time, there had been technological changes. So when I came here, it was common practice for every site to have designed its own dosimeters and its own technology reader systems to process these dosimeters. Because there really was no commercial source of equipment that could be used for this.
Franklin: What types did Hanford have?
Fix: What’s that? I’m sorry.
Franklin: What types did Hanford have? Of dosimeter and reading?
Fix: Well, they had actually, they had—about ’71, they introduced a new type of dosimetry called the thermoluminescent dosimeter. Again, this was a small crystals of salt that had the capability of responding to radiation, storing the signal, and then upon heating, would give off a light, give off a signal, in the form of light that could be measured that was indicative of the amount of radiation received.
Franklin: And was that part of what you were working on as an intern?
Fix: Well, that’s a great—you mean as a graduate student? Yeah. This thermoluminescent dosimetry was being used everywhere. At University of Washington, we used it also. Everybody used it. It was the replacement to film dosimetry. You know, you had these little crystals of salt that you could use that were just very handy. There’s quite a bit of physics that went into using these properly. But fundamentally it was sort of the latest technology at that time.
Franklin: Okay. And what other kinds of equipment did Hanford—did you use to monitor? Because you mentioned Hanford had its own dosimeters and dosimeter process equipment. So what other types of equipment?
Fix: Well, first of all, the dosimeters are really the after—they provide the official dose of record, but that’s really after-the-fact. When people go into the workplace, you’re not depending on a dosimeter to keep them safe. They go in with instruments, primarily instruments. People have knowledge of the work environment—typically they know what the hazards are. Now, as you probably know, that Hanford had a special workforce called the radiation protection monitors. Their whole job was to evaluate the work environment and accompany workers when they entered to make sure they were not taking undue risks using instruments. So instruments were always the number one thing. And one of the reasons this particular program involved working with this field was because you had to really make sure the dosimetry and the instrumentation were consistent.
There’s a lot of science behind using the right instrument as well as using the right dosimetry. Because at Hanford we have many types of radiation. We have different types of radiation that have different energies. And they all may require different methods of measurement.
So anyway, you know, maintaining this equipment and making sure it was accurate was my responsibility. And also we had the nuclear accident dosimetry. So I know, like, the first—I came to this program in December, and I had to spend two entire weekends out in December because there had been a situation where a worker reported that he had a high dose and saw a blue flash. So that involved a tremendous response by the contractors. I remember it happened on a Friday night. So we had the nuclear accident dosimeters at the facility. These are actually devices that are located at fixed positions in the facility. So we had to process all of those. And at that time we interfaced with the Site medical staff. So as soon as—actually, I should’ve said, the first clue on this was the dosimeter came in and was read very high. Not very—now, we don’t want to say very high, but certainly very unusually high; it wasn’t a normal dose.
Franklin: Sure. It was above the—
Fix: Above the action level. We had all sorts--
Franklin: Above the dose of record.
Fix: Well, not the dose of record.
Franklin: Oh, sorry.
Fix: It was above the—we have all sorts of action levels. Certainly, we have the legal allowable, then below that then you have where you have to take action, et cetera. But anyway, this was unusually high. Wasn’t like, life threatening, but it was—so we immediately, you know, the Site response took over, and probably took him to, I’m sure we probably took him to the medical staff, had some blood drawn. You could take blood and have it analyzed, at that time, at Oak Ridge.
But anyway, to make a long story short, none of this happened. I mean, it did—the person reported that there was a blue flash and that he had this high dose. But it turned out that the worker, after investigating and the contractor working all weekend, trying to resolve this situation, the person apparently—all the evidence was that he actually took his dosimeter and put it in like a baggie, dropped it down into the spent fuel pool to expose it either—I don’t know if he wanted to get some time off for New Year’s or—because this was happening at Christmas time.
Anyway, I don’t think he had any idea what was going to happen, but sadly, we had all sorts of bits of information. This was very much like forensic science, because with this radiation, we knew what type of radionuclides were in the spent fuel, we knew what type of residual contaminants had gotten onto the exterior of the dosimeter. We could tell, essentially, almost exactly what this person had done. And of course once it was all put together, sadly, you know, he lost his job.
Franklin: Sure.
Fix: Anytime anybody did anything with the dosimetry to—anyway, that was an employment-ending activity. So, anyway, we worked all weekend on that, sadly. But that was, in the long-run that was good, because that was one of my responsibilities. It didn’t happen very often but we had to process those dosimeters. The physics of criticality in particular is very, very complicated. So you really have to make sure that the system works properly and you get the type of data you needed.
But anyway, at the same time, we had an effort going on to adopt performance standards for dosimetry nationwide. It actually started years before, actually, decades earlier. But while I was—really become quite a common activity when I took this new position, and of course I was very supportive on performance standards as well. So, we worked on that. We actually made testimonies to Congress about—because there was complaints that if we enacted these performance standards, it put a lot of small processors out of business, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s always these tradeoffs between what was the better, greater good.
But the performance standards were eventually adopted and they were quite rigorous in terms of their criteria and what was achievable. There were all sorts of tests done. So I eventually became chairman of the—so this involved a couple of activities. One was every two years you had to pass a performance test where they would take dosimeters that actually employers would wear, send them to a lab to expose to, say, three different type, four different—depends on how you add it up, but several different types of radiation at different does levels, totally blind to you. And then send them back in three rounds of testing, and you had to pass the performance test.
Once you got the performance test results, if you passed, then you get an onsite programming appraisal, at least within the DOE system, by two technical experts. So then those results would then be sent to the oversight board to—I don’t know what all I have in here, but I mentioned this is my million-mile backpack from Delta for travel over the years. But I was basically they had the DOE lab accreditation program oversight board, so all the results then went to the board. And there was five of us. Then we would make recommendations whether to accredit them or not. It was a very important thing, because if you didn’t have an accredited program, you weren’t supposed to be able to do dosimetry. So it’s very significant.
So anyway I got this nice plaque from the Department of Energy, this service award, because I was the very first chair of the DOELAP Oversight Board for personal dosimetry, which later became external. So I did that from ’86 to ’91. I was actually on the board for a lot longer. But I was just the chair for this particular time. So that was a particularly important award in my—or, recognition in my life from DOE Headquarters. So anyway, it was obviously a very relieved moment in my own personal history when the Hanford program achieved accreditation.
Franklin: Sure.
Fix: Because, you know, that was not a given. It was a very difficult test. Especially for a site like Hanford, because with plutonium, we had the low-energy photons from the plutonium and also the neutrons so it was not an easy test to pass. So anyway, that program involved a lot of challenges and so I eventually left that program.
When I said at the beginning, we had to all maintain our own equipment, our own dosimeters, et cetera. Well, later in time, the commercial, and I guess partially because there was this performance standard, the commercial companies then had something to really focus on. And they eventually came up with technology and reader systems and dosimeter systems that were certainly, the performance was good enough to pass these standards and it was just much cheaper to buy a commercial system. So actually Hanford then implemented a commercially-based system in January of 1995. And at that time, I kind of had left—then I left the program at that point.
Franklin: In 1995?
Fix: Approximately. Because people were asking questions—were increasingly asking questions about the historical dosimetry at Hanford and elsewhere. I had—since I was responsible for the program, running the program, we were responsible for also going back and looking at the historical trends and patterns. The Hanford workers were an important component of the epidemiological study of the radiological effects on workers. The reason is because there was a lot of Hanford workers; they were employed early in the development of atomic energy; and Hanford had maintained excellent records. And the dosimetry seemed to always be of very good quality, historically.
But there were still trends in data that looked kind of unusual where if you started looking at details of the dosimetry, there were some trends in that that people wanted some explanation of. They could be a lot of things. There could be a change in the technology of the dosimetry, or there could have been changes in calibrations, or they could’ve been changes in operations. You know, there could’ve been a cleanup operation or there could’ve been a reactor, could’ve been shut down or what-have-you. So myself and others got very involved in analyzing data, historical data, to provide to the epidemiological community who were evaluating the Hanford studies.
So to make a long story short, I did a lot of the—quite a bit of this, partially while I was still a part of the dosimetry team. But then to support the Hanford worker epidemiological study, we did this. Then when that was—the people that were responsible for that program had done some of the epidemiological studies, then those studies were combined with other studies from other sites, like, notably in my case, Oak Ridge and Rocky Flats.
So, because they had the problem of trying to—fundamentally, they were trying to determine was there an association with the rate of incidences with various types of cancer with radiation dose. And since, as you know, cancer occurs spontaneously, with or without Hanford. The question was, did Hanford increase the incidence of various types of cancers? And that was very difficult question to answer, epidemiologically.
So there they were always trying to enhance their statistical precision, either in terms of trying to have, basically, in terms of trying to have more data. So Hanford, the studies at Hanford, the statistical precision wasn’t really quite adequate, wasn’t sufficient to detect that. So then they combined that with Oak Ridge and Rocky Flats. Still, there, they wanted more precision, so then that was eventually combined with what was called the Three Country Study, an international agency for research on cancer. That was combined with Canada and the United Kingdom. So I supported those studies. I was the—I don’t know what all I have in here, but I had—I was the chair of the international agency research on cancer dosimetry subcommittee at that time. And then we—did I mention then we took that study from the three countries and went on to do eleven countries in the world?
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Fix: Yeah, for the international study. So I was just the support, the dosimetry support. So the epidemiologists and biostatisticians from all these different residents from all these different countries and everybody would get this data. We would make judgments as to what dosimetry we thought had greater accuracy than others.
For example, it was hard, historically, and it’s still hard even to this day to measure neutron radiation. While there’s many types of facilities that have no neutrons, Hanford—many facilities at Hanford did not have neutron radiation; some did. And so we got involved in supporting those studies. So that led—that’s probably why I got my million-mile thing, going—I got many trips to France and that, supporting these studies, which were widely published.
Franklin: I see you have a nametag or a thing there with Cyrillic on it.
Fix: Yeah, I haven’t gotten to that part. Well, actually, after—I’ll get to that right away.
Franklin: Okay, sure, I was just curious.
Fix: Yeah, well, actually, after I was doing this for the thing—for the epidemiologists and that, just trying to cover, quickly, my career. The first phase of my career really was the environmental part, which we talked about. The second part was really the Hanford Site dosimetry program, which we talked about. The third part of my career really had to do with sort of taking the data and applying it to different types of programs. One of those was the epidemiology studies, which I was involved in the Hanford program, then the three sites, then the three-country, and then the eleven-country for IRE. These were only kind of part-time efforts; these were not full-time efforts. And then I became involved—then I took over the role in the joint US-DOE/Russian Mayak worker study.
Franklin: Okay.
Fix: Which you’ve probably heard about?
Franklin: I have. That’s going on today, right?
Fix: Yes, it is.
Franklin: Yeah, I’ve met—I don’t remember the gentleman’s name, but I—
Fix: Yeah, Bruce Napier, probably.
Franklin: Yes. Yeah.
Fix: Yeah.
Franklin: Yeah. I met him over the USTUR.
Fix: Yeah. Well, when Bruce—originally, he was primarily responsible for the environmental part, because they had a lot of effluent from the Mayak operation, which is very similar to Hanford in terms of its scope of—
Franklin: But they had more releases.
Fix: Well, they had more and also but they didn’t have a river like the Columbia.
Franklin: Oh. Theirs was slower and—
Fix: And also they reposited a lot of it to a lake.
Franklin: Yeah, and I don’t know if this is going to be apropos to you, but most of what I know about this is what I read from Kate Brown’s book, Plutopia, which I know had mixed reception among some folks here. But it’s very interesting, her coverage of how different the environmental conditions were in Mayak that led to much greater contamination.
Fix: Yes, right. Well, that’s right. You know, when you had eight single-pass reactors running at Hanford and they’re dumping it into—first of all, they went to pools to let some of the radioactivity decline. But then eventually when it went into that big river, and all got sent downstream.
Franklin: Sure.
Fix: And Russia didn’t have that. But anyway, my job was not the environment. My job was for the workers. Just like we had done the study for IRE for the workers. Because the context was there that the workers should have the very highest doses of all. They’re working in the facility, they live in the environment. And they’re monitored. If anybody should show an effect, you should be able to pick it up with these workers. So I took over the role as the technical lead for the external dosimetry part, working with my Russian colleagues. So that led us to many trips to Russia and many studies. This is actually my name in Russian. You know, my nametag. You know, so?
Franklin: Right, no, I can read that. Yeah, Djon Fix.
Fix: So, I don’t know why, this is just a collection of things in here. I did this for several years, until we had a major publication special edition of Health Physics devoted to this particular—results from this program.
Franklin: The US-Russia—
Fix: US-Russia collaboration, right, for studying the Mayak workers—
Franklin: How did you find working with your Russian colleagues?
Fix: Well, first of all, they were—we worked with them long enough that we really developed some real personal ties. I mean, for example, the interpreters were very nice people to deal with. They knew more about American culture than I did. I mean, they knew all about—their main source of information, I believe, was American movies and American music. So they could name—they were just remarkable in being able to know singers and songs and movies, much more capably than I could, and I lived here.
Franklin: Right.
Fix: [LAUGHTER] But we were there long enough to see them come in as young interpreters and then get married and then have babies and then have toddlers, you know? So it was quite a nice experience from the human aspect. As far as the Russians, it took us a while to—it took, I think, working with the same team on both sides for them to develop a level of comfort with, say, at least the American approach. Our American scientific approach is that everything is checked and double-checked, and there’s no—you shouldn’t really have any personal—you shouldn’t feel defensive if people are checking your work. What you really care about is that it’s accurate. And I think the Russians initially were not too inclined to have us checking their work, but that was our job, was to check everything. So after a few years, I think it all worked out really well.
Our primary job—and actually, this was true throughout my career, my primary job was typically always writing everything up. Writing it up and letting other people check it. Anyway, for the Russians, we did the same thing. It was Russian workers, a Russian facility, and we were there just to mentor them and I guess to represent the DOE’s interest in this work.
The reason that DOE was there is because, generally speaking, the impact on workers from American facilities was, at best, controversial. It was never a clear answer to that question. Well, the Russian workers could’ve gotten as much dose in one year as the American workers got in their entire lifetime. So you really were going to a situation where there ought to be some impacts. Not only did that, they had some accidents with workers. So that actually where they actually did have the medically-exhibited elements of radiation syndrome. So most of those were removed from our—from the epidemiologic study, because they’re really more like an accident evaluation.
Franklin: Right, you were looking at the dose that someone would get from normal work in Russia.
Fix: That’s right, that’s right. Which—that’s correct. Interestingly, the Russians—because we had what were called these hidden cities. So we would go to the hidden city where Mayak was located. These are interesting experiences, because when you enter these towns, you need to only—you can only enter by imitation. Because you go through a—they know how to really have a fence or a border. Because you go through an outer one, and you sit between two barbed wire—you know, with razor wire on the top, with guards walking back and forth with AK-47s. Nobody’s cracking any jokes.
So anyway, but the city inside that, they had records for everything. All your family, all your medical exposures, any medical abnormalities you may have will be part of your personal record, as well as all the occupational information. So it’s really a goldmine; it doesn’t really exist, probably, maybe outside, in another country, outside of that type—where you have a captive city, all these records, all the records are maintained, and it be available for study. So we worked with the Mayak facility there as well as what was called the Southern Urals Biophysical Institute, to come up with these studies.
Franklin: Is that another secret city? In the Southern Urals—
Fix: No, that’s the institute inside, that was located within the—at the hidden city. They’re no longer hidden now, but at one time. Meaning that they would never show them on maps of the area.
Franklin: Right, and you couldn’t get in without a really good reason for being there.
Fix: Well, we had to be invited by the Russian—it had to be approved by the Russian government. And actually because of politics going back and forth between the United States and Russia, we weren’t always allowed to go into the city. Sometimes we had to—our team had to stay outside of the city, and then they would come out and meet with us scientifically, for the scientific work. But anyway, that’s just part of international politics, I guess.
But anyway—let’s see, where was I? So we went on that, and when I eventually left that program when we achieved all these major publications. Because I was getting a little bit further along in my career at that time, and that’s a lot of work to go to Russia. When we land in Moscow, we have to—Russia is a very big country; it has eleven time zones. So once we landed in—we usually landed at Frankfurt, and then at Frankfurt, then you have essentially the same remaining flight that’s going across the United States, four more time zones. There, we had four more time zones from Frankfurt. And then we had to get on a bus and ride for two hours. So it was—you know, you were very tired by the time you got to these facilities.
So it was nice working with the Russians. They really developed—you had to be there long enough, I think they initially were very suspicious of you, but I wouldn’t say that that’s any different, you know, if you go and investigate—if you go there like as part of this DOELAP program I was talking about, basically site experts like say the Hanford Site expert and Los Alamos Site expert would go to Oak Ridge to evaluate the Oak Ridge program, there’s plenty of opportunity there for sensitivity. But it all went very smoothly because I think everybody believed in the benefits of the program.
Franklin: Right, Well, I mean, it kind of makes sense with the Russians, right? I mean, we were enemies for 40 years and we created all these weapons out of fear of each other, and I guess—I mean, it seems like it’s not hard to imagine, if the roles were reversed, Russian scientists—Americans being very defensive about Russians questioning their research method or their research. Or at least that kind of, that initial—
Fix: Well, no, I agree with you, Robert. Even—there’s a little bit even more there to that, I think. First of all, the Russians were in a communist society, and where being a member of the communist party was really a very important thing. They couldn’t always trust their neighbors, let alone trust a foreigner.
And the other thing is, is interestingly, where we used to go to work near, Yekaterinburg was the main city where we flew to, that’s where Gary Powers was shot down. In the U-2 plane. I’ve always wondered how would Americans feel if there was a high-flying Russian airplane flying over the United States? I mean, we have—I mean, this is just a question of opinion, because I’m sure we would say we have good reasons to be looking at—they’re not an open society; we’re an open society. Russians can live here. We can’t really live there in Russia. So this is a very complicated thing, but you can certainly understand some sensitivity.
But anyway, they handled it very well, and amazingly we were in Russia at this—we used to go there and basically stay at what’s called a danya dacha. It’s a dacha, it’s like a country estate.
Franklin: Yeah.
Fix: Type of thing. Really was not that nice, but it was comparatively a good place to be. But anyway, when the United States invaded Iraq, we were actually in Russia.
Franklin: You mean the ’91 invasion?
Fix: Yeah. No—
Franklin: Okay, the first Gulf War.
Fix: The one where we invaded—no, not the first one. The second—not from—the younger Bush invasion.
Franklin: Oh, the second Gulf War.
Fix: The second one, yeah. We were actually there.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Fix: And on the Russian TV, we could see all of this going on, but we couldn’t understand what was happening. The Russians would very politely not really say—they could only really ask the interpreters. But I was very impressed with how much many of the Russian scientists how much they could do in English. Because we certainly weren’t talking in Russian. We always had to have interpreters. Anyway, it was a good experience overall. You know, initially, it was kind of stressful, because we really had a mission which was we wanted to get the study done, we wanted to verify that the methods were methods that we would agree with. And so we eventually were able to achieve all those things. But it was a challenge.
Franklin: So that leads me to a couple questions. You mentioned that in America, the link between workers and cancer was—what did you call it? You didn’t say ambiguous, but you said it was—
Fix: Controversial.
Franklin: Controversial. What did you find in Russia in regards—
Fix: Well, those studies are still being put together and published. First of all, you’ve got to gather the datasets; you’ve got to validate the dosimetry; you have to decide if you want to use all of the population or a subset. You know, like I mentioned these workers that were exposed to very high levels, you may not want to include those. You may want to put them in a separate study.
The other thing is, is some of the epidemiological studies, at least historically, really used the recorded dose of record being the dosimeter. Because, like for example at Hanford, everybody had a dosimeter. You had a measurement for everybody. You had people had very little dose, and you had people that had a lot more dose, depending on what their jobs were. But within that population of people, you also had some workers that were exposed to, that had intakes of plutonium or other nuclides. Really those people are actually, maybe should be in another category, because not only did they have external radiation, they have internal radiation.
So there’s many ways to slice this data, trying to figure out what data is best to use. And then there’s those that have the neutron radiation. Certainly some workers, like the plutonium workers have neutrons, they have intakes—some have intakes—and they also have external.
So that was our role; that was kind of my role as a dosimetrist supporting these epidemiologists to say, well, you know, I really wouldn’t put a lot of—as far as identifying what was the higher quality data, I might pick people that only worked at reactors, for example. They only get exposed primarily to high energy gamma radiation. They’re in this facility, it’s a huge facility with all this shielding. Anything that can get through that shielding, the dosimeter’s going to measure relatively very accurately. So we would go through and analyze various scenarios as to what would be the better data. But to answer your question, I don’t think those data have been published fully yet.
Franklin: Okay, so it’s still ongoing.
Fix: Yeah, yeah, the study’s still ongoing.
Franklin: How did the Russian program differ—dosimetry program differ from the American dosimetry program, if at all?
Fix: Well, I’m trying to remember exactly. Well, first of all, they’re always behind us a little bit as far as like, they used film dosimetry for a very long time. A lot longer than we did. I’m not sure if there was any thermoluminescent dosimetry data in what we analyzed. It was all—there’s nothing really wrong with film, but it is—in some ways, film can actually be superior, but it does have—in general, it’s not as good for broad, like if you’re exposed to many different types of radiation. It has challenges with neutron dosimetry, for example.
Franklin: Oh, okay, okay.
Fix: So it has a special different type of film that’s used for neutrons. It’s called neutron track emulsion. So I would say that the data was—I think the record keeping and the use of the dosimetry was well done, but as far as the technology, it was probably—they were just getting, I think, getting to the point of implementing thermoluminescent dosimetry when we were there, I think, as I recall.
Franklin: Oh, okay, so in that regard, then, they were a couple decades behind.
Fix: I would say so, yes.
Franklin: Oh, okay. Interesting. So--
Fix: I wouldn’t say “behind”; I would say using different, older technology.
Franklin: Oh, okay, okay, sure, sure, yeah. Sorry, I didn’t want to—I know phrasing’s important, so I appreciate that.
Fix: Yeah.
Franklin: So when did you—so what was next, after the Russian dosimetry program?
Fix: Well, actually, I was getting to be about 66 or so, and I know I decided that I’d had it with the Russians because one day—I’d suffered from arrhythmias. You know, I got a pacemaker when I was about 45. So I was pulling my suitcase at 2:30 in the morning through the snow in Russia to the Yekaterinburg airport. And I was kind of falling behind the other three or four members of our team, and I was—because you kind of get kind of tired if you have the arrhythmia problem. So I thought, jeez, this is ridiculous, I’m going to have to quit this and I’m kind of at a good place to quit. So I decided there that was my last trip to Russia.
Fortunately, we’d already had these publications and there were people to take on whatever my responsibilities were. So I left it at that point. And then I went on, as you may know, around 2000, Congress—another role that I had was Congress, you know, passed the DOE Worker’s Compensation Act? The Energy Employees’ Occupational Illness Act?
Franklin: The EEOICPA?
Fix: Yeah. That one. Well, I was very involved in that, because I’d been doing this work on dosimetry construction for the epidemiologists and we’d been publishing documents on how to dosimetry construction for—and how to—
Franklin: Yeah. [UNKNOWN]
Fix: And how to take in considerations of energy and angular dependence because, you know, in a dosimetry program, you had the measurement—you really only know what did the dosimeter get. Because that’s what you’re measuring it with. You really don’t know what the body’s getting. So since cancer is organ-dependent, typically—I mean, you have particular types of cancer, usually it’s organ-dependent. Like leukemia, it would be bone marrow, et cetera, et cetera. So we’d done a variety of work to try to take into consideration the energy and the angular dependence on the dosimetry to come up with better estimates of organ dose, because that’s really what epidemiologists needed.
And when they came out with the energy workers’ employment compensation act, which it’s been called, I guess, some of our publications they thought, well, this is a way we can measure organ doses. Because we’re talking about cancer for the workers, we can use these methods to estimate organ doses for the workers in different ways. So at least our stuff got of interest to NIOSH who was responsible for dosimetry construction and also in 1995 the Congress had mandated that DOE transfer their epidemiologic studies to NIOSH. So I’d already had a relationship with NIOSH, even on like the IRAC studies, later. Initially it was DOE then it transferred to NIOSH. So I got very involved in the NIOSH-DOE worker. And when I left Battelle, when I reached 60 I left Battelle and went to work for Dade Moeller and Associates—
Franklin: An NV5—
Fix: Huh?
Franklin: An NV5 company, right?
Fix: Now it is, yeah. But at that time, it was Dade Moeller and Associates. So I went to work for them. And even when I was still doing the DOE program. So there I became the principal external dosimetrist for the NIOSH for external dosimetry, but working with many other people and it was the NIOSH researchers. I must say, all throughout my career, you know, I was just one person that—we always had small teams, we were always working together, everybody—my job, usually, typically, was writing it up. And then everybody else would tear it part. And I’d write it up again. And go through a few cycles and then we had something everybody felt good about.
So I did that for several years. And there I got to travel to many DOE sites, because every site needed a technical basis document to do dosimetry construction. So I got to travel to, you know, many DOE sites throughout the nation and prepare these documents. So anyway, that was kind of the end of my career after a while. The NIOSH program was a friend, colleague of mine. I went to part-time status in 2011 and in March of 2013, a colleague of mine that I worked with for a long time, you know, there was some kind of cutback, some reduction in funding for that particular project, as I recall. And he decided that he’d just as soon retire and leave the money, whatever money that was available, make sure it was available for younger people. And I thought, well, I’d do the same thing, and we both left. Cleaned out our offices and went on to different things.
Franklin: Finally retired?
Fix: Yeah. And I had to finish a paper that I was—for the national—well, it used to be the National Commission on Radiological Protection in the United Kingdom. They changed their name to something. Anyway, the same group though. But they wanted the paper written on their epidemiologic study on their recommendation then. I didn’t want to do it but eventually I did do it. Because all the people that could’ve done it better than me seemed to be occupied doing other things and they weren’t able to do it. So once I finished that document, then that’s when I was totally done.
Franklin: Okay.
Fix: That happened in March of 2013, and then that was the end of my career.
Franklin: I’m sure you’re still keeping busy.
Fix: Oh, yeah, now. I’m really not doing anything professionally but I’m certainly doing a lot as far as taking care of my body and exercising and going to the local Fun, Fit and Over Fifty club, which is a great club. Doing yoga. So kind of a different perspective.
Franklin: Great. I just have one last kind of closing question.
Fix: Uh-huh.
Franklin: And that’s, what would you—I have one last closing question, then I guess we could show, if you want to show any of the plaques, we could do that and you could talk about those.
Fix: Yeah.
Franklin: My one last closing question is what would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford or living in Richland during the Cold War? And after.
Fix: Well, I think I would stress being a student of science. Science is just so remarkable, and Hanford’s just one particular aspect of science that had to do with nuclear energy or nuclear—I say it had to do with nuclear, radiological sciences. But that’s such a broad thing, I mean, you can talk about the stars, cosmic radiation, terrestrial radiation, studying the functions of the human body and medical research. My whole life has just been so amazing, because of the technology. I would just encourage anybody who loves science—I mean, you can always question maybe the politics, but the science is universal. So it’s just been a great career.
Franklin: Great.
Fix: Really.
Franklin: Well, thanks, thank you, Jack. So the best way—so, if we could show them, we need to get the camera here.
Fix: Well, this is my one for the DOE-Russian study. I didn’t know which ones I had here, but—
Franklin: What we’ll do is we’ll move this. Okay.
Fix: This is my role on the Russian as US team lead for the Russian program. I don’t know if the reflections is—
Franklin: That’s not too bad. No, that’s okay.
Victor Vargas: There’s a shadow.
Fix: I guess you can’t really see that very well. Yeah.
Franklin: US Team Leader for External Dosimetry.
Fix: Yeah.
Franklin: September 2007. Great.
Fix: Yeah, I got that from them. It was very nice of them to do that.
Franklin: Yeah.
Fix: And I think you already have the other ones I have.
Franklin: Is that from the Health Physics Society?
Fix: Yeah, well, I have a bunch—actually, I was chair of the other role I forgot to mention was I was chair of the Health Physics Society standards committee. I mentioned my commitment to standards, like the standards for that, but I actually worked for, I think I was, for eight years, I was on the committee and then I became chair of the committee. So then I was the committee chair. Then after this, actually, near the end of my career, I actually went out to the international standards organization.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Fix: Yeah, so I went to meetings in Paris and Vienna, representing the DOE interest in radiation protection for what’s called Technical Committee 85 Scientific Committee 2, which means nothing, but anyway, it has to do with this one small area. International standards are something that’s very important to all of the world, probably other than the United States. We’re kind of sitting over here and the rest of the world really relies on these international standards. And so do we. If we want to market goods, internationally.
Franklin: Sure, sure. Did you have anything—any other—
Fix: Well, no, I don’t want to bore people with all of these. I’ve shown those particular ones. I do have a number of health physics-related.
Franklin: Like your Herbert M. Parker award.
Fix: Yeah, I was very fortunate to receive that and as you know, Herb Parker is, you know—
Franklin: Kind of a legend in the health physics world.
Fix: He’s a legend and a person that really understood the importance of dosimetry and record keeping. So I was very fortunate to receive that from my colleagues.
Franklin: We actually have a painting of Herb Parker in our office, framed, that was given to us. But it’s good. He sits over our coffee pot and watches over us.
Fix: Yeah, I’ve only—I don’t think the rest of them are really—they just have to do with—
Franklin: It’s totally your choice.
Fix: Yeah, I don’t think the rest of them are really worth—I don’t know where my—oh, this is my certification one. This shows a very old person, these are all my recertifications as a health physicist.
Franklin: And when do all those start, from--
Fix: 1977, I think.
Franklin: Oh, founded 1960.
Fix: No, these are all my accreditations. I can’t really function as a certified health physicist without being recertified every four years.
Franklin: Oh, I see.
Fix: So it shows a very old fellow.
Franklin: You just put in your dues.
Fix: Yup, that’s right.
Franklin: Well, great, well, thank you so much, Jack. It was a really illuminating interview. Thank you for putting up with my limited knowledge of science and health physics. I think you did a great job explaining what it is that you did and the importance of it. So thank you.
Fix: Yeah. Glad to be here. Thank you, Robert.
Franklin: Yeah, thank you, okay. Yeah, that was really--

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