Keith Pearce, Consultant and Author
Keith Pearce originally trained as a nuclear physicist but his first real job, at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London, was to teach nuclear submariners and nuclear dockyard officers about radiation; about what it is, how to measure it, how it interacts with matter, how it can harm human beings and how to stay safe in its presence.
He then moved to Nuclear Electric and joined their Health Physics Research team and spent several years developing and applying models of the movement of radioactivity in the atmosphere, seas and foodchains and the consequential dose to members of the public. This work supported the safety cases for gas cooled reactors, the Magnox (now shutdown) and Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors (AGR) classes as used in the UK.
In this role he helped to develop the tools used to estimate the dose to the public in an emergency to help formulate countermeasure advice. He joined the site emergency scheme as an on-site radiation monitor (an uncomfortable job involving the wearing of coveralls and respirator and walking around in a radiation plume most have run away from), an Assistant Health Physicist (a more comfortable job in an air conditioned room and near to the coffee machine) and then as an Executive Officer (a job where other people keep your coffee cup charged).
He also joined the Company’s central emergency response organisation, taking on dose assessment, health physics and command roles.
As Head of Emergency Planning, responsible for the emergency preparedness of ten Magnox nuclear reactor sites in, he worked with regulators, government officials, emergency services, local authorities and other expert groups to revise and maintain national standards and to keep the ten separate emergency plans and the corporate response up to standard. He played a significant role in the training of site and corporate emergency responders.
He also witnessed many Level 2 exercises from Strategic Coordination Centres (SCCs) and participated as Company Media Technical Briefer.
For several years he has worked as an independent consultant and author. In this time he has helped to write, review and maintain emergency schemes for new build companies, nuclear dockyards, operating companies and local authorities. He can contacted via his Consultancy Company
email to Katmal Limited
His first book “How to survive a nuclear emergency” contains advice aimed at the people living near a nuclear site about how to prepare for and respond to an off-site nuclear emergency.
His second book attempts to convey the core knowledge needed to understand how to protect the public in an emergency and how to protect those men and women whose roles in an emergency response may lead to their exposure to radiation. This includes areas of nuclear physics, reactor physics, reactor design and fault studies, safety cases, dispersion models, radiological protection and dose uptake models.
