Safety Review For The Radioisotope Thermal Generators on NASA's Cassini Space Vehicle

Dr. James is a Member of the U.S. Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Panel/Biomedical and Environmental Effects Subpanel (INSRP/BEES), which advses the Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Department of Defense on the adequacy of safety assessments for spaceflight missions involving reactors or radionuclide heat sources.

For the Safety Evaluation of the Cassini Mission, Dr. James led the BEES' assessment of doses to populations in Florida which could possibly result from accidental re-entry of the Cassini vehicle into the earths atmosphere. The BEES Subpanels responsible for assessing the possible range of accidental events, the associated releases and physical characterizations of the 238Pu thermal generator material, and the probability distribution of meteorological dispersion and ground deposition.