Bio
Mr. Ralph Schwartzbeck, M.S., P.E. is the owner and chief engineer of Highland TEMS, LLC. His 40 years of engineering and management experience has allowed him to perform numerous design, safety and operational analyses, and project management activities at over 80% of the commercial nuclear sites in the United States. This experience has also allowed him to represent the United States in developing an improved engineering evaluation process for the World Association of Nuclear Operators in response to the Fukushima accident.
Ralph is a 1978 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and served in the Navy Nuclear Program and qualified as a naval nuclear engineer and in submarines. After leaving the Navy in 1983, he began his career in the commercial nuclear power industry at the Point Beach Nuclear Plant. While at Point Beach, he was the Instrument and Controls Engineer, became Senior Reactor Operator trained and stood watch as a Duty/Shift Technical Advisor. At the same time, Ralph obtained his M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering with emphasis in nuclear reactor thermal-hydraulics. His thesis work in two-phase flow scaling has been published in numerous industry journals and has been cited in a published monograph.
After Point Beach and during the rest of his career, Ralph has held a number of technical and managerial positions in the commercial nuclear industry for various major U.S. nuclear engineering design firms, nuclear utilities, and INPO. He was also a technical advisor for a successful non-governmental organization assisting the Bwiza village in Rwanda. In addition, he was commissioned to write a book for the Environmental Science Department of Samford University, entitled “Risky Business or Safe Enough…The Role of Risk Analysis in the U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Industry.”
He is a registered professional engineer and currently resides in Marietta, GA with his wife and near his daughters and five grandchildren. When not working, Ralph enjoys reading, travelling, and playing classical and jazz trumpet. He is a member of numerous professional societies and well as being a patron of the American Nuclear Society.
Publications
“Two Phase Flow Transition Scaling Studies”, 1988 National Heat Transfer Conference Proceedings (This work was twice cited in the book Two-Phase Flow in Complex Systems by Salomon Levy)
“Similarity Requirements for Two Phase Flow Pattern Transitions”, Nuclear Engineering and Design, Volume 116, 1989
“Coupled Fluid/Solid Analysis of A Tilting Disc Check Valve”, NUREG/CP-1052, Vol. 3, Proceedings of the Sixth NRC/ASME Symposium on Valve and Pump Testing, July 2000
“Risky Business or Safe Enough?: The Role of Risk Analysis in U.S. Nuclear Reactor Safety and its Regulation”, Published as part of the Visiting Scholar of Risk and Environmental Studies Program, Samford University, Birmingham, AL, November 2002
Education
B.S., Ocean Engineering (Mechanical), U.S. Naval Academy (1978)
M.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee (1988)