Darrell Liles’ career in health physics began at sea.
He spent six years in the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Program, serving as an operational health physicist aboard the USS Long Beach. There, he was trained not only in radiation safety, but also as a mechanical operator where he gained a working knowledge of reactor systems from the inside out.
“Reactors are where I cut my teeth,” Liles said. “We had to understand how every system worked, not just from a radiation standpoint but also mechanically.”
After leaving the Navy and earning a degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla, now Missouri University of Science and Technology, Liles joined the U.S. Geological Survey as a reactor health physicist and later became the radiation safety officer for facilities across the country. He then moved to the Environmental Protection Agency, supporting emergency response efforts, before spending seven years consulting in the uranium recovery sector.
Today, as a senior health physicist with the Baltimore District and acting radiation safety officer for USACE, Liles said that his early operational experience with the Navy informs his work across all major health physics portfolios, including the Army Deactivated Nuclear Power Plant Program (DNPPP).
“Though the reactors we are decommissioning are different from the ones I worked on in the Navy, they have similar technology where the radioactivity tends to accumulate in the same places. That experience has definitely helped me, especially when it comes to reviewing plans and understanding that we may have a problem in a particular area,” said Liles. “No matter what project we’re working on, our job as health physicists is to protect workers and the public and make sure we don’t miss anything.”
He has also been instrumental in USACE’s support of Operation Tomodachi following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan. As part of the U.S. disaster-relief operation, the Navy deployed ships to radiation-contaminated areas to deliver aid. Using advanced gamma spectroscopy techniques, USACE health physicists assess contamination on ship components to determine what can be safely reused and what requires controls.
“The Navy was taking the components apart and surveying by hand, which is incredibly labor intensive, so they reached out to us,” said Liles. “Our process is saving quite a bit of time and a lot of money, somewhere over $2 billion.”