Robert Webster “Bob” Powell, 93, died Sunday, June 20, 2010 at his home in Fairhope.
He was born Sept. 3, 1916 in Birmingham, the only child of Robert Wilson Powell and Mary “Mamie” Lee Keife, both with deep roots in Alabama.
While attending high school in Birmingham, he ran track and played football until sustaining a knee injury. He joined the ROTC at Auburn University, from which he earned a baccalaureate degree in chemical engineering in 1939.
His first job was with Dupont in Kankakee, Ill., where he met his future wife, Shirley Anne McCartney of Chicago. After World War II began, he joined the U.S. Army, but was soon released to assist Dupont in fabricating materials needed for the war effort.
Moving to Oak Ridge, Tenn., he began work in January 1944 on the X-10, the first controlled large-scale nuclear reactor, as part of the Manhattan Project.
Following the war, he lent his expertise to developing nuclear reactors at what became in 1947 Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island in Upton, N.Y., where he worked until his retirement in 1980 and re-location to Fairhope.
At Brookhaven, he helped construct three nuclear reactors, icluding the Graphite Research Reactor, the first peacetime nuclear reactor built in the United States. He became head of the Brookhaqven Reactor Division, responsible for the operation and maintenance of the reactors, which have been used by scientists to conduct cutting edge research, resulting in many awards, including seven Nobel Prizes in chemistry and physics.
He was a fellow of the American Nuclear Society and holds a patent for a cooling mechanism employed in nuclear reactors aboard submarines. During his retirement, he was a frequent consultant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as recently as a few years ago.
Survivors includ his wife of 67 years, Shirley Powell of Fairhope; seven children, Anne Nealon Saueer and mary Holloway Powell, both of Indianapolis; Robert Webster Powell Jr. and John Keife Powell, both of Fairhope; Mark Dollon Powell of Tallahassee, Fla., Luke Peyton Powell of Gilmanton Iron Works, N.H., and Melissa Margaret Merritt of Mercer Island, Wash.; and 13 grandchildren.
