ABOUT US
MARVIN RESNIKOFF, PH.D.
Senior Associate
Dr. Marvin Resnikoff is an international consultant on radioactive waste issues.
A nuclear physicist and a graduate of the University of Michigan, Dr. Resnikoff has worked on radioactive issues since his first project at West Valley, New York in 1974. Throughout his career, he has assisted public interest groups and state and local governments across the US, Canada and England.
His recent research focus has been on the risk of transporting and storing radioactive nuclear reactor fuel, decommissioning nuclear facilities and the health impact of radioactive waste from oil and uranium production.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Physics - 1965, University of Michigan
M.S., Physics - 1962, University of Michigan
B.A., Physics/Math - 1959, University of Michigan
SUMMARY OF PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Marvin Resnikoff is Senior Associate at Radioactive Waste Management Associates and is an international consultant on radioactive waste management issues. He is Principal Manager at Associates for dose reconstruction and risk assessment studies of radioactive waste facilities and transportation of radioactive materials. A nuclear physicist and a graduate of the University of Michigan, Dr. Resnikoff has worked on radioactive issues since his first project at West Valley, New York in 1974.
Throughout his career, he has assisted public interest groups and state and local governments across the US, Canada, Germany and England on radioactive waste storage and transportation issues. He has authored or co-authored four books on radioactive waste issues including Living Without Landfills, regarding low-level waste landfills, and The Next Nuclear Gamble, regarding transportation of radioactive waste.
PROJECTS
Radiological Implications of Fracking. Dr. Resnikoff examined the radiological implications of fracking in papers on indoor radon concentrations and drill rock disposal in landfills from the Marcellus shale formation. For Delaware Riverkeepers (PA), FreshWater Accountability Project (OH) and Residents for the Protection of Lowman and Chemung (NY) he wrote reports that examined the implication of disposal of drill cuttings and drill fluids on landfills and the environment. In 2011 he was an invited speaker at the national conference of the Water and Environment Federation. He examined several fracking sites in Pennsylvania.
Dose Reconstruction. He has conducted 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. He has also served as an expert witness for plaintiffs in Karnes County, Texas, Milan, New Mexico and Uravan, Colorado, who were exposed to radioactivity from uranium mining and milling activities. He has worked on personal injury cases involving former workers and residents at the ITCO and other oil pipe cleaning yards in Louisiana and Texas. He also evaluated radiation exposures and risks in worker compensation cases involving former workers at Maywood Chemical Works thorium processing plant.
He also served as an expert witness in a case involving the Port St. Lucie reactors and brain cancer developed by two children and in a case involving clean-up of an abandoned radioactive materials processing facility in Webster, Texas. He investigated phosphogypsum plants in Florida, Texas and Alberta, Canada and served as an expert witness in a personal injury case involving a Texas phosphogypsum worker. He served as an expert witness in a case involving plutonium workers at INEEL, and federal border guards in Brownsville, TX. He is also a member of the Health Physics Society. In June 2000, he was appointed to a Blue Ribbon Panel on Alternatives to Incineration by DOE Secretary Bill Richardson.
Decommissioning. In February 1976, assisted by four engineering students at State University of New York at Buffalo, Dr. Resnikoff authored a paper that, according to Science, 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 decommissioning waste would still have to go to low-level or high-level waste disposal facilities. He assisted public interest groups and served as an expert witness before the NRC on decommissioning the Yankee-Rowe, Diablo Canyon, Big Rock Point and CT Yankee reactors.
He 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 co-authored a study on the cost of remediating the former West Valley, New York reprocessing plant site. 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 also served as an expert witness for CRPE, a public interest groups, regarding the proposed expansion of the Buttonwillow, California NORM landfill and for Earthjustice re. the licensing of an irradiation facility near the Honolulu airport in Hawaii. In August 2010, he was an invited panelist at President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Nuclear Safety. In October 2011, he was an invited panelist at the annual conference of the Water Environment Federation on the subject of radioactivity in Marcellus shale wastes.
Transportation of Irradiated Nuclear Fuel. In addition to dose reconstruction and decommissioning cases, Dr. Resnikoff also works on the risk of transporting radioactive material. Under a contract with the State of Utah, Dr. Resnikoff was a technical consultant to DEQ on the proposed dry cask storage facility for high-level waste at Skull Valley, Utah. He assisted the State on licensing proceedings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He has also prepared studies on transportation risks and consequences for the State of Nevada and the Nevada counties: Clark, White Pine, Lander and Churchill. In addition, at hearings before state commissions and in federal court, he investigated proposed dry storage facilities at the Point Beach (WI), Prairie Island (MN), Palisades (MI), Maine Yankee, Connecticut Yankee and Vermont Yankee reactors.
He is presently working for the State of Nevada on Yucca Mountain repository issues before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). He is also serving as an expert witness for Earthjustice on a proposed NRC license for a food irradiator at the Honolulu, Hawaii airport. In 2013, he was an invited panelist before the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, Implication of High Burnup nuclear Fuel on decommissioning and transportation.
Nuclear Waste Management. Dr. Resnikoff is an international expert in nuclear waste management, and has testified often before State Legislatures and the U.S. Congress. In Canada, he 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 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 authored a report for Greenpeace on the environmental assessment of a proposed intermediate level waste repository under Lake Huron, and for the Provincial Womens Council of Ontario on radioactive waste management costs in a proceeding before the Ontario Energy Board. 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.
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 several hundred thousand years. In March 2004, Dr. Resnikoff was project director and co-author of a study of groundwater contamination at DOE facilities, Danger Lurks Below.
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. 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).
Research Director of the Radioactive Waste Campaign. Dr. Resnikoff 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.
Project Director at the Council on Economic Priorities. 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.
1974 - 1981. 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).
1965 - 1973. 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.
Dr. Resnikoff is a member of the American Public Health Association and the Health Physics Society.
Dr. Resnikoff also has published many articles and books as well as being invited to speak at many prestigious conferences.
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