Distinguished Alumnus to Speak on "Monitoring Radiation from Fukushima"

Distinguished alumnus Stephen Musolino, ’76, certified health physicist with the United States Department of Energy (DOE), will present “Monitoring Radiation from Fukushima” at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, October 18, in Bulger Communication Center East 2.

Musolino, a national authority on the security of radioactive materials and radiological emergency response, spent three weeks in April at Yokota Air Base, some 25 miles northwest of downtown Tokyo and 150 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that were damaged by the earthquake and tsunami in March. Musolino worked as an assessment scientist, living on the base and working around the clock to assess field measurements of radiation as part of a DOE consequence management team deployed to monitor the radioactive releases and protect U.S. personnel and assets.

Field teams collected samples, measured ambient radiation, and collected in situ gamma spectra to validate the data collected over wide areas by helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft. Before deploying to Yokota, Musolino worked on the Consequence Management Home Team at the Remote Sensing Laboratory at Nellis Air Force Base in late March. He will discuss his experiences and present the results of the DOE assessments of the environmental measurements. His talk is free and open to the public.

Musolino is a certified health physicist in the Nonproliferation and Safeguards Group of the Nonproliferation and National Security Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He is a fellow of the Health Physics Society and a member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. He holds a Ph.D. in health physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a master of science in nuclear engineering from Polytechnic Institute of New York University, and a bachelor of technology in engineering technology from Buffalo State. He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Buffalo State during the 2011 Commencement ceremonies in May.