PLENTIFUL ENERGY

But I had gone over and over the ones in my field. At the laboratory, the generation
of Walter Zinn was mostly gone—men like Joe Dietrich, a man with unusual depth
in his views of the nuclear enterprise generally; John West, the engineer who built
the Experimental Boiling Water Reactor, later the GE commercial reactor system;
Harold Lichtenberger, who had been principal in the building of EBR-I. These men
had gone with Zinn when he left to form his own company. But just behind them
were Bob Avery, Harry Hummel, Len Koch, Harry Monson, Al Smith, Walt
Loewenstein, Dave Okrent, and others, very much also names I knew, men whose
names were on the Geneva papers, were internationally known, and who were the
leadership of the division.
I soon found that Argonne, as might be expected, was not composed entirely of
first-rate scientists and engineers. There were more than a few. And they stood out.
But the really talented, the truly exceptional were just that; they were exceptions.
And it was on those exceptions that the reputation of the laboratory had been built.
It‘s always that way, in every field, I imagine. At Argonne the good ones were very
good indeed.
A prime example was Argonne‘s noted reactor physicist, Robert Avery. Bob
Avery was especially respected, and for good reason. An exceptional talent, with
unusual and enviable powers of logical thought, he was widely knowledgeable and
effortlessly influential. He was wise, in a way that few are, not only in technical
matters but in political and administrative matters too. He was about to be
promoted, for at the time he was head of the Reactor Physics theoretical group, and
he was about to become director of a newly created Reactor Physics Division later
that year when the big division was divided.
Avery‘s influence in all reactor development, and in the affairs of the entire
laboratory, only increased in the thirty years that followed. And very important to
my decisions on undertaking the IFR later, he influenced my thinking a lot; Bob
always represented the attitudes of the Lab as they had been in the first years I was
there. All through the years, he took initiatives. He pushed and prodded and
persuaded the DOE to underwrite programs and projects needed for successful
development. This or that program would establish some important property of the
fast breeder reactor. In later years, they were reactor safety programs, and without
them, key elements of the IFR would still be in doubt.
In those early years he was reserved, dignified really, more than he chose to be
later. A session with Bob was always a mental workout. He looked at problem from
every angle. When Bob was finished there wasn‘t much uncertainty left to talk
about. And he was a critical judge of technical talent. He had infinite patience in
explaining his position to those with talent, and little with those who could not or
would not understand. Particularly dreaded was an abrupt sentence I chose
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