Northern Ohio Chapter

Chapter History

Sometime in 1988, several people at Perry Nuclear Power plant decided to establish a formal organization for Health Physicists and on June 30^th, the first Bylaws were written. On Oct 20^th 1988, Dick Terry and Gerry Kindred, employees of the Perry Nuclear Power Plant, submitted a petition to the Health Physic Society (HPS) to obtain Chapter Status.  The proposed name of the Chapter was Northern Ohio. The petition listed 53 possible chapter members of which 24 were members of the Health Physics Society and 29 were non-members with about 47 persons being employed at either Perry or David Besse Power Plants.  The Northern Ohio Chapter was approved and Ron Kathren, President-elect of the HPS at the time, personally presented approval of the charter to the Chapter at the first meeting of NOCHPS in Nov 18, 1989.  We became an Ohio non-profit corporation April 21 2003.

 NOCHPS met regularly for the next few years with the meeting primarily being held at Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. (CEI) headquarters in Independence,OH.   CEI was centrally located and had excellent facilities and food that were always available at low cost.  Several well known and interesting speakers made presentation during this time including Tom Poston, Genevieve Roessler, Ken Skrabe and Al Brodsky are but a few.  The first meeting at a non-utility facility was held at Metrohealth Medical Center on Jan 19, 1991, the night the Desert Storm started.  In the past few years, NOCHPS has met at a variety of places: Sports Bars, hospitals, Motels, Universities, Electron beam facilities (KSU-NEO Beam) etc…whomever could supply a dry, warm space and had food available.  The topics presented at the meeting has also varied from background radiation levels in Ramsar, Iran, FDA rules for irradiation of food, cleaning up Ashtabula River and many more. We have toured Nuclear Power Plants, University Research Facilities, Hospital Radiation Therapy Facilities are but a few of the places we have seen.

Membership in the organization has varied in numbers and type of work being done.  In 1992, a list of NOCHPS members had 80 listed.  It increased to almost 100 in 1996.  The nature of membership has also changed considerably since it was founded.  Initially, membership consisted primarily of Nuclear Power workers.  Presently, membership consists of people employed at Universities (Kent State University and CWRU), hospitals and hospital consultants, industries and manufacturers supporting Health Physics and we still have Nuclear Power Plant workers. 

NOCHPS has participated in educational efforts to aid the general public.  We have, with other organizations, conducted Science Teacher Workshops since March 25, 1995 to aid high school teachers in understand ionizing radiation.  In the fall of 2004, we plan on co-hosting a “First Responders” course for non-radiation workers who must respond to emergencies where radiation might be present.

Perhaps the zenith of NOCHPS occurred in the successfully hosting the annual, national HPS meeting June 10-14, 2001.  A large effort on the part of about 15 people with the cooperation of all members made this meeting a huge success.  In excess of 1200 Health Physicist and their families from around the world came together in Cleveland for this event.  Attendee and national HPS officers praised NOCHPS for their effort and overall organization that the Local Arrangement Committee provided. 

NOCHPS has survived through ups and downs and has prospered. Our current membership is active, engaged and dedicated to keeping NOCHPS an interesting, enjoyable and educational organization.