Featured Interview

Via: energy.gov

Q&A: Pete Miller's Journey as a Black Nuclear Engineer.

Q: Tell us about your early life. 

A: I'm from the inner city of Chicago. On the South Side, all of us lived in segregated neighborhoods. We were working class — my dad was a milkman — but in our neighborhood we had black doctors and teachers and lawyers, people of all economic levels. 

Part of my history is that I sat next to and was a friend to Emmett Till, who went to McCosh Elementary School with me. In the summer of 1955, we all said goodbye because we were going on our summers, and he went to Money, Mississippi, and never came back. He was lynched. 

He had a big impact on the start of the Civil Rights Movement. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, in her memoir she said she was thinking of Emmett Till.  

He was a friend of mine, and his death had a big impact on me. 

[Editor’s note: McCosh Elementary School was renamed for Emmett Till in 2006.] 

Q: How did you get interested in nuclear? 

A: I went to a segregated high school, and at that school I had a physics teacher who had a Ph.D. He taught high school physics because he couldn't get any other job as a physicist. That got me really interested in science in general. 

Then when I left there and went to the Military Academy at West Point, our choices of classes were basically zero. There was a curriculum that was fixed until you were a senior, and when you were a senior you had one elective.  

We had a choice between civil engineering and nuclear engineering. And I looked at the nuclear engineering textbook and saw these nuclei with electrons running around them and said, “I'm gonna go do that one!” So I took that one class, and it hooked me. 

Eventually, after I served in Vietnam and left the Army, I studied nuclear engineering at Northwestern University and got my doctorate there. My dissertation was on computational methods of neutron transport. 

Q: In 2009, you became the first African-American to be appointed assistant secretary for nuclear energy. Looking back on that time, were there moments that were particularly challenging or that you were particularly proud of? 

A: Technically you're right — I was the first Black assistant secretary for nuclear energy. But I was not the first Black American to run nuclear energy in the Department of Energy.  

That was Bill Magwood. During his time, it was called “director of the Office of Nuclear Energy.” So I always thought of myself as the second Black assistant secretary. 

Now, I would say there are a couple things I'm really proud of. My deputy was Pete Lyons at the time, and we came in together and we basically started the small modular reactor program in the Department of Energy. 

We wanted to figure out what was the next big thing after the [Westinghouse AP1000 reactor] that the federal government could get behind. And we said, well, small modular reactors. We didn't invent the name, but we went to the White House Office of Management and Budget and we sold them on starting federal support for SMRs. 

I'm also proud of defending NEUP, the Nuclear Energy University Program. 

The thing that was by far the most challenging was testifying before the United States Congress. I'd never experienced anything like that.  

Q: According to DOE’s USEER report, Black workers make up about 12 percent of the nuclear energy workforce. With nuclear energy heading into this new era of advanced reactors, why is diversity an important part of that transition? 

A: I think having more diversity in the professional ranks of nuclear, as well as in all the other STEM areas, is critically important. Mainly because throughout our recent history as a country — and probably even more so in the next century — STEM is going to drive the direction in which society goes. 

Artificial intelligence is going to influence how everything emerges in the future. And because it's so data-driven, the people who put this data in need to have experiences that are appropriate to everyone. That’s one big reason the nuclear workforce needs to reflect the population at large. 

I can give other examples, too, like environmental justice — locations of reactors and nuclear waste sites. How do you make sure people with little power aren't disadvantaged in the decision-making process? 

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