Shelby Brewer

Shelby Brewer

Shelby Templeton Brewer is an American nuclear energy sector executive in private and public positions since 1978. He was Chief Executive Officer of ABB-Combustion Engineering Nuclear Power, one of the world's leading nuclear companies for ten years (1985–1995). He was the top nuclear official in the Reagan Administration from 1981–1984.

Early year and personal information

Shelby Brewer was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and attended public school there. He is the son of Fay Templeton Brewer and Donald Brewer, an aviation pioneer in the 1920s and 1930s. He has one sister, Janet Templeton Riggs who is married to B. Lawrence Riggs, MD.

In his teen years Shelby was well known in the south as a junior tennis champion, winning numerous tournaments and achieving a place on the 1953 Junior Davis Cup Team.

He married Marie Ulfsdotter Anesten of Sweden in 1966. They have two children (Jens and Sara) and three grandchildren (Hannah, Hayden, and Matilda). The Brewers live in Alexandria, VA.

Education

Brewer earned these degrees:

• BA Humanities, Columbia University
• BS Engineering, Columbia School of Engineering
• MS Nuclear Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• PhD Nuclear Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Military service

Brewer served in the U.S. Navy as a commissioned officer during 1961–64. He was a division head on the USS Randolph (CVS 15) during 1961–62, supervising several hundred personnel. He participated in Mercury astronaut recovery, the Bay of Pigs and Dominican Republic engagements. During 1963–64, he was Dean of the U.S. Naval Reactors School at New London, Connecticut and Bainbridge, Maryland., a training school for naval officers entering the nuclear fleet.

Career posts

Nuclear Chief in Reagan Administration (1981–84)

Brewer was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the US Senate. in 1981 to the top U.S. Government post in nuclear energy, where his management responsibilities included: all civilian nuclear research, development, and demonstration programs; U.S. Navy nuclear reactor development and deployment; the U.S. Uranium Enrichment Enterprise (for both civilian and military purposes); nuclear waste management; special applications of nuclear technology, such as power isotope and reactor systems for space missions. His fiscal responsibilities included managing assets of over $20 billion, with annual outlays of about $1.5 billion, and uranium enrichment outlays and revenues of about $2 billion.

When Brewer was appointed in 1981, nuclear power in the US was in a slump. Many nuclear plants in the licensing and construction pipeline had been terminated, and new orders had ceased. The Carter administration had banned breeder reactor development and commercial reprocessing in the US, and had characterized nuclear as an energy source of last resort. Brewer’s orders from the Reagan administration were to reverse the Carter policies and to reinvigorate the US nuclear option.

Shelby Brewer set down in his confirmation statement to the US Senate an agenda for a nuclear reformation. Rather than administer a large amorphous technology program, Brewer elected to focus sharply on several large policy deliverables necessary for configuring nuclear power as a mature business. His statement stressed (1) nuclear licensing reform, streamlining and standardization of nuclear designs offered by the vendors; (2) closure of the backend of the nuclear fuel cycle, with an option ultimately for reprocessing, and deployment of a national system for disposition of spent nuclear fuel; (3) remobilization of the US Breeder Reactor Program; and (4) reforming and making more responsible the role of government in domestic nuclear power development, while reducing government spending. Brewer’s confirmation statement formed the basis of President Reagan’s Nuclear Policy Statement in October 1981.

Nuclear power was a very contentious issue, and Brewer was the administration’s lightning rod, receiving and counterpoising the attacks of those in Congress opposing nuclear power. Congressional hearing appearances by Brewer were heated and confrontational.

Brewer is credited with a score of historically significant achievements:

• Revitalization of U.S. nuclear policies, while reducing federal spending on nuclear energy by about 50%.
• Design of a streamlined nuclear licensing and regulatory system, now embodied in federal code and legislation (Energy Policy Act of 1992).
• Design and enactment of the Nuclear Waste Act of 1982.
• Uranium enrichment business turnaround (1983–84), following a severe market crisis, saving the multi-billion dollar enterprise from insolvency.
• Initiation of the Naval Advanced Fleet Reactor Program.
• Reformulation and reform of U.S. nuclear export policies.
• Negotiation of the Japan-U.S. breeder reactor agreement, following the termination of the Clinch River demonstration project.
• Mobilization of TMI cleanup and recovery.
• Rationalizing and projectizing diverse U.S. Government programs addressing the “nuclear waste legacy” left by the Manhattan Project and subsequent nuclear weapons programs.
• Service as Chairman of Tri-Agency Task Force on Space Power support of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), aka “Star Wars”.

Brewer served as “Nuclear Czar” until October 1984 when he resigned to become President of the Nuclear Division at Combustion Engineering. Commenting on Brewer’s record during his first term, President Ronald Reagan said: "In each of these cases, as well as many more, I have relied on your wise and expert guidance, and I want to thank you personally for a job well done."

President & CEO ABB-Combustion Engineering (1985-95)

Brewer joined Combustion Engineering in 1985 as President of its Nuclear Power Division. In 1990, Combustion Engineering was acquired by Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), and Brewer’s responsibilities were expanded.

Nuclear power was in the throes of a severe nuclear recession which had set in during the mid-1970s. There had been no sustained plant orders in over a decade, and the entire industry including plant manufacturers and fuel cycle companies were overcapacitied, in both personnel and facilities, for the served market. Combustion Engineering as whole as well as its Nuclear Power Division were surviving on contingent reserves set aside years past for nuclear liabilities. Brewer believed it imperative that his division be downsized and aligned with current realities, to become a net cash generator on current operations.

Combustion Engineering Nuclear underwent a rapid repositioning during his service as its Chairman, President and CEO, including the following benchmark events:

• A major turnaround by 1985, in a slack, oversupplied and highly competitive nuclear market; a pretax profitability swing from minus $20 million (1984) to plus $20 million (1985) on current and ongoing operations, through downsizing, re-engineering of the nuclear businesses, exiting low-performing product lines, and divesting low-performing business units.
• Doubling in sales volume in nuclear services (aftermarket) by 1987, and improvement in services from break-even to a return on sales of 10%.

• Awarding of the first nuclear plant order (for a US company) in over a decade, with the orders placed by Republic of Korea, for a series of CE standardized nuclear plants, providing CE with the largest profit-bearing nuclear system backlog among the world’s nuclear suppliers.
• The first standardized nuclear plant design to obtain a pre-license from Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), under new streamlined regulatory processes formulated by Brewer as Assistant Secretary of Energy.
• Lead ABB’s initiatives in Kuwait and the Former Soviet Union.
• Established ABB joint venture with Monolit, the FSU’s engineering and manufacturing entity for ICBM control systems.

Controversies and Brewer’s besponses

As the top nuclear energy official in the Reagan Administration, and as a corporate executive in a down market, Brewer was not immune from controversy. While known for cool, understated demeanor, and an analytic mind, Brewer could in a split nanosecond respond with a volcanic laser-beam focused ferocity. He did not suffer fools gladly.

• Asked why he took a political appointment, he responded that Ronald Reagan was the only 20th century president that he would care to serve. “It was an opportunity to help peel back the obscenities of creeping Federal intrusion and incompetence, and more specifically to make reforms happen in my field.”
• Asked what was missing in the nuclear power sector (1981), he responded: “Well a lot, but my biggest peeve is the inability or unwillingness of nuclear companies and other nuclear players to think of nuclear power as a business, rather than as a technological sand-box. Nuclear power is an infirmed ward of the state, due to vacillation of government policy and due to private sector failure to standardize products and to treat nuclear power as a business. Who in his right mind would team with the US government expecting it to be a reliable partners in furthering nuclear power?”
• Asked to expand on his vision of nuclear power as a ‘business,’ he responded: “Nuclear power was spawned by the government -- the Manhattan Project and Admiral Rickover’s naval program. Many earnest people like Milton Shaw desired that commercial uses of nuclear power be federalized. I think this was and is the wrong approach. Nuclear power should be subjected to the same Adam Smith market forces as everything else. It has been my experience that the government does not do things well when it strays beyond the yoke the Constitution placed on it.”
• Asked why President Reagan reversed President Carter’s ban on breeder reactor development and fuel reprocessing, he responded: “Well, Mr. Carter’s policies amount to unilateral disarming, regarding risks of nuclear proliferation. I could be cute and ask ‘was Carter concerned that states like Tennessee and South Carolina would get a nuclear weapon?’ No. His policies were based on some fantasy of US guilt and necessary atonement, which he strove to place on the rest of the international nuclear community --- France, United Kingdom, Japan, and the Soviet Union. His logic as a tactical matter escapes me --- we will wear a hair shirt, deny ourselves the benefits of nuclear power, and expect the rest of the world to do the same. That did not happen; in fact Carter made US nuclear power the laughing stock of the world. Clearly his policies were foolish.”
• Asked why the Clinch River Breeder Reactor (CRBR) project was important, he responded: “CRBR is a step toward commercializing an essentially inexhaustible energy source --- that is the Uranium 238 in nature and in tails from the enrichment process already mined and above ground. The U238 sitting above ground is sufficient to power the United States for 10,000 years in a breeder reactor economy. Are there aspects of CRBR that I dislike? Yes. Would I prefer demonstrating a 1000 MWe breeder? Yes. But CRBR is a bird in hand, and I am not willing to trade it for several paper reactors in the bush. Is CRBR too expensive? Yes, thanks to a breeder army marching in place during the Carter presidency.”
• Asked what he made of the Congressional termination of CRBR, he responded: “Well this event calls into question whether the US can ever take on a major long-term, expensive, risky project in a government-private sector partnership. This is particularly true for a project which spans many election cycles. Federal policy is too unstable and fickle. Now having said that, it is incumbent on me to salvage as much as possible, and to put the breeder program on a different institutional course. It does no good to sit here, wallow in grief, and continue to caress our dead bride (CRBR).”
• Asked about charges that he misappropriated funds for a public information program, he responded: “Well if that is the most egregious of the charges that can be hurled at me, then I have got away scott-free. This is equivalent to jay-walking or spitting on the sidewalk. The facts are that the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 as amended, requires a public information program on nuclear. And this requirement keeps getting reasserted in contemporary authorization and appropriation statutes. I have been scolded by Congress for not doing public information, and also by some in Congress, ignorant of the laws they vote on, scold me for doing a public information program.”