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“TRIBUTE TO RONALD W. BARTON” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the Senate section on pages S13511-S13512 on Oct. 29, 2003.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO RONALD W. BARTON
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I would like to note before the Senate a great professional honor bestowed recently on my constituent, Ronald W. Barton of Arlington: the Chairman's Medal of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The Safety Board, the Senators will recall, was established by statute in 1988 for the purpose of providing the highest quality of technical oversight of the safe operations of the Nation's nuclear weapons complex--dozens of plants with very high risk radioactive material. To accomplish this very difficult task, the Safety Board has to attract and train the very best technical talent in the nuclear area. Chairman Conway's citation accompanying the award to Mr. Barton says in part:
Mr. Barton joined the Board in 1994, bringing with him more than 25 years of project management and engineering experience in the design, construction, and operation of nuclear reactors for commercial facilities. He became an indispensable leader for the Board's technical staff, and was key to the development of more than half a dozen technical reports, which continue to have an impact on operations in the defense nuclear complex today.
I have examined Mr. Barton's career, and I certainly agree with Chairman Conway. Mr. Barton not only brought his own expertise to the board, but he trained and developed a generation of young engineers to contribute to the admirable technical performance of the safety board, where a technical staff of about 60 oversees the safe operation of a complex of over 100,000 workers with a budget of over $16 billion. This technical staff is superb, and Ron Barton helped build it, and then led it by example.
Now Ron must retire, much too early, because of his leukemia. We wish he were able to continue to serve, but we are grateful for the contributions he made to safety in the nuclear complex. For instance, Ron was the expert lead on at least six very complex and thorough technical studies, on such diverse areas as: DOE emergency management capabilities, confinement ventilation systems, fire protection, criticality safety, and documented safety analysis. This is an extraordinary list of achievements; these reports still guide the Department of Energy operations of these complex, hazardous facilities. We should be grateful to Ron for these contributions.
Ron Barton is the best of the best, and the Nation will miss his contributions. We wish him good health and a happy retirement.
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