From working road construction 80 hours a week during summers as an undergrad at USC Columbia, to creating Enterprise SRS and helping the Savannah River Site grow out of a closure mentality, Dave Moody has always prided himself in being a hands-on individual.
Moody announced in November that he plans to retire this month after four years with SRS and 36 years with the Department of Energy. Moody still plans to engage in the site and watch it grow into the "springboard for how we recover our nuclear industry."
The road to DOE
Moody grew up in Florence, South Carolina, doing carpentry with his grandfather and plumbing with his father. After graduating high school in 1967, he attended USC Florence for a year before marrying his wife, Pat, in 1968. The newlyweds moved to USC Columbia to campus housing, a location that is now a parking garage.
"Our honeymoon consisted of opening boxes in our little apartment on campus and, unfortunately, we had left all of our gifts back at her home. So, for a week until we went back, we had one pot to cook with - an interesting challenge," Moody said.
As he inched closer to receiving his degree in chemistry, an opportunity to conduct research opened up the summer before his senior year. Moody said that set the stage for his career when his adviser suggested he consider graduate school.
He accepted an offer from Indiana University, where he was able to conduct more research in his first year.
The fixer
After earning his Ph.D in inorganic chemistry, Moody was invited to compete for a directors'-funded post doctorate at Los Alamos National Lab, his introduction to the Energy Department.
At that time, the former construction worker was finally considering academia as a career and began working on catalysts for cleanup at the New Mexico lab. After successes at the lab, Moody's manager asked him to take over the lab's nuclear medicine program. Moody said he stabilized that program, then moved on to Rocky Flats - a Colorado plant that served as a nuclear weapons production facility in the 1950s.
In 1989, Moody was asked if he would take on a task to restart the program.
"I went on a two-year assignment that turned out to be 10. I knew it was the waste issues that would keep it from restarting. So I started working those out and helped stabilize all the plutonium that was sent to SRS that I now have to work to get rid of," Moody said, laughing.
Moody then went to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Under Moody's leadership, the plant was able to receive up to 45 shipments a week after only receiving a couple each week before his arrival.
Eventually, Moody moved into a role as the Carlsbad field office manager, where he continued improving the number of shipments and worked to develop a path forward.
'We are not a closure site. Get over it.'
Moody accepted the SRS manager position in 2010, but was no stranger to site activities. Believing the site was the "key to the nuclear future of this country," Moody first called an all-hands meeting to reinforce the fact that SRS is not a closure site.
Following in that belief, Moody crafted Enterprise SRS - an initiative that focuses on clean energy, environmental stewardship and nuclear nonproliferation.
Under Enterprise SRS and the Recovery Act, officials were able to re-purpose 85 percent of the site, rather than spending millions of dollars decommissioning areas of the property. Another effort under the act was the grouting and closing of the site's P and R Reactors in 2011. The 30-month effort contributed 62 square miles to the site's operational footprint reduction strategy and provided jobs and a boost to the economy through $1.6 billion in Recovery Act funds, according to DOE.
Other successes under the program included the growth and exposure of the Savannah River National Lab, which includes partnerships with Clemson University and in aiding Fukushima.
One part of the program Moody said he would have liked to have seen SRS take part in is the production of small modular reactors - reactors powered by uranium with electricity outputs of reportedly less than 300 megawatts. They are reported to allow for less on-site construction and increased containment efficiency, but officials in the nuclear industry are divided on how practical they are.
Regardless, Moody said he is not giving up on them, and that SRS is the best place in the country for the technology.
"When you look at the manufacturing prowess of South Carolina, you look at the region and coupling that with SRNL - this is the perfect place to build small modular reactors," he said. "That's been the driver behind it. It's not to have the first of them. It's really to build that whole industry."
Moody said he's had the pleasure of overseeing the operational closing of four liquid waste tanks and is happy to report that two more are scheduled to close in the near future.
In addition, Moody was able to change the status of the site's H Canyon facility - the only hardened nuclear chemical separations plant still in operation in the U.S. - from preparing for shutdown to receiving shipments of nuclear materials from around the world for processing.
"When you look at this administration's initiatives on capturing proliferate materials around the world and keep them out of the hands of terrorists, SRS is the go-to place for that," Moody said.
Wide open future
Budgetary issues, as well as infrastructure needs, are lasting concerns, said Moody. Still, he credits the South Carolina and Georgia congressional delegations for listening to local SRS officials and stakeholders and fighting for proper funding. In addition, Moody said the stakeholders themselves - including the Greater Aiken Chamber of Commerce, the local colleges and businesses - have all been instrumental.
Though infrastructure and funding needs are rising, Moody still sees a "wide open future" for SRS through the expansion of the national laboratory, ongoing clean-up efforts, and working with Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
Specifically, Moody predicts that the processing of nuclear materials will become more lean and won't call for large structures like H Canyon.
"We need to show this whole new approach on how we're going to do nuclear processing in this country. SRNL will be the springboard to do that in partnership with industry and academia," he said.
Always a hands-on activist for nuclear, the Florence native now will take on a new role as a retired but engaged resident who has handed over the keys to Jack Craig, the new SRS manager. Craig was the interim manager when Moody arrived several years ago and was Moody's top pick for his successor.
Moody added, "(Jack) really is the best choice to take the site from where we are now and move it forward."
Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter for the Aiken Standard and has been with the paper since June 2013. He is originally from Vidalia, Ga., and a graduate of Georgia Southern University. Follow him on Twitter @DerrekAsberry.