Wall Street Journal 20 January 2007

John W. Simpson (1914 - 2007)

Harnessing the Power Of Nuclear Energy For Civilians, Submarines

By Robert J. Hughes

John W. Simpson helped bring nuclear power to U.S. submarines, electricity generation and the space program, and was one of the few who could hold his own against the volatile Admiral Hyman G. Rickover.

Mr. Simpson, who died January 4th at age 92, "had the most amazing knack for simplifying things ... He could always articulate it in a few brief sentences," says his son, Carter. He also was an all- business executive who believed in multiple backup plans.

John W. Simpson in the mid-1950s with a photo of Nautilus Mr. Simpson, former president of Westinghouse Electric Power Systems Co., worked with Admiral Rickover to create a nuclear Navy, most notably with the SSN Nautilus, the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine. Then, despite the admiral's anger over losing Mr. Simpson's technical saavy, he developed Westinghouse's commercial nuclear-power plant business and organized the company's astronuclear laboratory to build a reactor for nuclear rockets.

In 1953, he was under pressure from Admiral Rickover to make a presidential photo opportunity run flawlessly: President Dwight D. Eisenhower was to wave a wand (actually a neutron detector) in Denver, triggering a phone hookup to start a bulldozer that would break ground for an atomic-power station in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. "If that thing buries itself on the ground or the engine stalls, you're going to be last week's toast," Admiral Rickover told Mr. Simpson, recalls Ted Rockwell, who served as a liaison between the admiral and Westinghouse engineers. To be safe, Mr. Simpson had buried a railroad rail six inches underground to keep the bulldozer from getting stuck. "You can't take chances, you know," Mr. Simpson wrote in a 1995 book, "Nuclear Power from Underseas to Outer Space."

That attention to detail marked Mr. Simpson's career, which ranged from making electrical equipment on Navy ships shockproof and fireproof during World War II to negotiating contracts for nuclear power plants in France in the 1960s and '70s. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he was denied a commission because of poor eyesight. In 1939, he met the future Admiral Rickover, then a contracting officer, when Mr. Simpson was an engineer at Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric Co, now part of Tokyo- based Toshiba. Admiral Rickover nixed Mr. Simpson's desire to enlist in the Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, saying his engineering work was more important to the war effort, according to his family.

In 1946, months after the Japanese surrender following the U.S. atomic-bomb attack, Mr. Simpson saw the destruction first-hand in Hiroshima as a member of a Navy technical-assistance team. "It was a grim start to my nuclear career," he wrote in his book. Shortly afterward, he shared a four-bedroom house with Admiral Rickover and others during a leave of absence from Westinghouse at Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to help figure out how to apply nuclear energy for generating power.

"I had gotten along with Rickover reasonably well during the war ... but I knew that wherever Rickover was, things would be hectic," Mr. Simpson wrote in his book . It was not all work, though Mr. Simpson continued to use Admiral Rickover's military rank when referring to him. Since they lived in a dry county, the men sharing the house used a bit of subterfuge to avoid police detection when buying liquor in an adjacent county, transferring the booze to a second car before crossing the county line and keeping it in "a large security safe" procured by Admiral Rickover, Mr. Simpson wrote.

Mr. Simpson worked closely with Admiral Rickover for a decade, overseeing the building of the Nautilus propulsion plant at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania., and at the nuclear power plant in Shippingport. "Rickover was a real firestorm, but by being completely outrageous he managed to bring out capabilities in people they never knew they had," says Dr. Rockwell. In his book, Mr. Simpson likened the admiral's management style to a "full-court press in basketball: Keep the pressure on, use unorthodox tactics, and never let up ... Rickover broke every management rule but for him it worked." Mr. Simpson wrote that he tried to teach Admiral Rickover the basics of reactor physics, but the admiral ultimately quit the lessons to focus on "the big picture." Admiral Rickover died in 1986.

The bond helped Westinghouse develop a strong relationship with the Navy, according to Dr. Rockwell. "The guys [at Westinghouse] always acted as if they were fellow engineers," compared with other companies that treated the Navy as "the fiscal bureaucracy that supplied the money."

The relationship started to fray in 1959, when Mr. Simpson organized Westinghouse's Astronuclear Laboratory. Admiral Rickover was furious over Mr. Simpson's departure from Navy work, in part because he would be taking with him several top engineers and scientists at the Bettis plant, which Westinghouse managed for the government.

Meanwhile, without Admiral Rickover's support and a lack of government funding, Mr. Simpson led Westinghouse's efforts to persuade National Aeronautics and Space Administration to begin a nuclear rocket program. In 1961, wearing a full-body cast after a skiing accident, he testified before a congressional committee and ultimately helped Westinghouse win a contract to develop a nuclear rocket engine for NASA. The program was cancelled in 1972.

By then, Mr. Simpson already had moved on to other nuclear- power fields within Westinghouse, developing commercial nuclear power. Between 1963 and 1977, when Mr. Simpson retired at the age of 63, Westinghouse sold 53 large nuclear plants in the U.S. and 42 overseas. Ted Stern, who was responsible for building Westinghouse's commercial nuclear power business, recalls Mr. Simpson enabled his managers to move quickly. In 1967, when Mr. Stern needed millions of dollars to build a facility in Pensacola, Florida to manufacture a piece required for nuclear reactors, he says Mr. Simpson approved it without a fuss, saying, "I have faith in what you're saying and doing." Adds Mr. Stern, "I don't think you'd get away with that today."

Throughout his career, colleagues say, Mr. Simpson remained even-tempered, even during times when conversations with Admiral Rickover erupted into shouting matches. "John always kept his cool," says Dr. Rockwell. "He could be upset, but basically he kept his head. He never lost it."

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John W. Simpson's Legacy 1946: Worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (then called Clinton Laboratory) on nuclear power. 1954: Launch of first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus (shown); led Westinghouse team that built pressurized water reactor. 1959: Organized Westinghouse's laboratory for research on nuclear rocket engines. 1969: Named president of Westinghouse Electric Power Systems Co.