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about nuclear.com |
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P.O. Box 5807, Rockville MD 20855 |
Voice: 240-751-7286 |
Fax: 301-762-6714 |
email: steve.schulin@nuclear.com |
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nuclear.com is a one-person operation, although the work of many others is represented by the information presented here. My name is Steve Schulin. My interest in energy and environment issues was piqued and honed during my debate team years in high school and college. I recall the first tournament during my junior year, when my partner and I won two preliminary rounds against Harvard teams advocating program to build lots of High Temperature Gas-Cooled reactors. When we again were paired against a Harvard team in octafinals, we won the coin flip and chose to be on the negative. Funny, I don't remember who we eventually lost to later in the elimination rounds, but I remember those three HTGR debates. We presented some evidence about the HTGR at Fort St. Vrain being up and down like a yo yo that was hard for them to overcome. Another nuclear-related debate memory is a round from sophomore year in prelims at Northwestern - my partner and I lost to an MIT case advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament. Their strongest argument was on how the government habitually lies to the public. Imagine my surprise when, almost 30 years later, the surly guy from MIT ends up as Secretary of Treasury for Clinton Administration! If there's any youngsters out there so inclined, I hope you'll try debate. I pursued those energy and environment interests into the world of employment, too. My first job at a nuclear plant was here in Maryland at Calvert Cliffs, as a junior radiation protection technician during their 1977 refueling outage. Over the next 7 years, I worked at twenty two American light water reactors, logging about 11,000 onsite hours as a journeyman technician. Also during that time, I finished my last two semesters at The Catholic University of America (B.A., 1979), worked as a reporter for an oil & gas industry consulting firm in Washington DC, and did some debate coaching and debate handbook writing. In 1984, I joined the health physics training services department at General Physics Corporation in Maryland. That was also the year my wife and I bought our first computer - a Mac 512. Over the next six years, I worked on a wide variety of nuclear power-related projects, joined the American Nuclear Society, passed the NRRPT exam (that's the National Registry of Radiation Protection Technologists), and got teaching certificate from in-house instructor training program. My first modem was the 300 baud internal beauty in the TRS-80 Model 100 laptop I bought in 1985. CompUserve was my delightful first exposure to recreational modeming. Soon thereafter, I got a user ID for NRC's Bibliographic Retrieval System (you had to attend a training course to get access), and it was that which prompted me to buy a 1200 baud modem for the Mac. After a long project with a great bunch of folks to help Rancho Seco develop a top-flight radiation protection technician training program, my boss let me try out an idea for a subscription-style, industry events oriented, continuing training program, based on bottom-up review of the 170 or so documents released on a typical day by NRC. Thus was born the "Health Physics Case Study Service", which became pretty popular as part of continuing training programs at nuclear power plants. I was so psyched about this interesting project that when my wife and I considered naming our firstborn, I enthusiastically suggested "Casey". A teenager now, he's expressed delight that we chose otherwise. In 1990, I started my own business -- a newsletter called Radiological Inspection Reports. I took it online that November with a pair of 2400 baud modem-equipped phone lines, running a Mac freeware package called MUBBS. The BBS featured a variety of information from NRC, including data dump of daily public document room releases, and full text of some OCRed NRC documents like the Weekly Information Report and radiation protection specialist inspection reports. Other sources of information, including selected Federal Register and Commerce Business Daily items were added. When full text in a single file edition of Commerce Business Daily was added, the BBS became popular with a broader audience -- folks were calling from across the country to spend an hour downloading the current issue of CBD. A pair of 14.4 modems were added the next year, and soon thereafter the BBS switched over to commercial software called FirstClass, which featured a graphical interface. In 1994, the BBS added internet email, and chose nuclear.com as the domain name. Full text in a single file editions of Federal Register and Congressional Record were added, as was public domain news "feed" from Voice of America gopher site and Department of State BBS. As access to internet became more popular, the BBS added a 28.8 dedicated connection with local ISP to allow TCP/IP connection via internet. The FirstClass software was so endearing, that nuclear.com has been slow in coming to the web. My vision for nuclear.com includes significant involvement by hundreds of others, with correspondents from every nuclear facility, and information from hundreds of nuclear industry-related businesses. If you'd like to be a part of this, please drop me a line. Thanks for your interest, steve.schulin@nuclear.com |