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RAYMOND LOUIS DICKEMAN
1
1922-1983
BY FRED W. ALBAUGH
RAYMOND L DICKEMAN perhaps one of the most brilliant engi-
neering intellects that the nuclear industry has seen, died of a heart
attack on March 12, 1983. Mr. Dickeman served for thirty years as
an engineer and executive with the General Electric Company and
Exxon Nuclear Company until ill health forced his retirement in
1978.
Born in Limeridge, Wisconsin, in 1922, Raymond Dickeman was
awarded an M.S. degree in physics by the University of Wisconsin
in 1948. He then joined the General Electric Company at the Han-
ford, Washington, nuclear complex, which the company operated
for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Over the next ten years
Mr. Dickeman gained experience in all aspects of nuclear reactor
technology, rapidly earning advancing responsibility in the general
program of technology improvements at the Hanford plutonium
production reactors, which increased reactor productivity severalfold
during those years. In 1959 he was placed in charge of operations
and maintenance at the eight production reactors and from 1960 to
1962 was General Manager of reactor fuel-manufacturing opera-
tions for the Hanford project.
Next came a new and quite different challenge, when he was
charged with responsibility for the entire dual-purpose N-Reactor
project. This included completion of a construction program that
had not been going well, followed by plant start-up and then the
ongoing operation of this $300-million complex. It was here that
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Raymond Dickeman's ability to motivate his organization to an all-
out effort was vividly demonstrated: over a two-year period they
accomplished difficult construction goals without sacrificing quality,
followed by an almost model start-up of the plant in spite of its
radically new design. Today, after almost twenty years, the N-Reac-
tor continues to produce electric power and special nuclear materials
reliably and efficiently and is expected to do so for years to come.
During the last two years of his stay at Hanford, Mr. Dickeman was
General Manager of all General Electric Company operations at
Hanford.
In 1967 Mr. Dickeman moved to the commercial nuclear opera-
tions of the General Electric Company and became manager of an
ambitious program of turnkey nuclear power plant construction
aimed at early penetration of the utility market by a boiling-water
reactor product line. Again he evidenced a mastery of the complex
labor and procurement problems encountered in this pioneering
field. He reorganized and staffed his component to a high level of
effectiveness, with the result that each of seven large nuclear power
stations was completed in less than four years and at a cost less than
one-tenth of that being experienced today.
In 1968 ESSO, now Exxon Corporation, made a commitment to
enter the nuclear fuel cycle field, and the following year, with only a
skeleton staff and partially formulated business plan in place, it
engaged Raymond Dickeman as Chief Executive of its newly
formed subsidiary (now Exxon Nuclear Company). In this position
he had the opportunity to prepare a business strategy and to struc-
ture an entire working team for the tasks ahead. The first and
primary task was to organize a fuel-manufacturing business by put-
ting a core professional group together to design the product,
develop fabrication processes, and design and oversee the construc-
tion of a fabrication plant. This was articulated with the organization
of an operational staff to produce the fuel and the marketing and
administrative services. The effort was successful. Exxon Nuclear
Corporation is today the leading independent fuel fabricator of the
United States and enjoys an excellent industrywide reputation for
both its people and its products.
Moving to enlarge the scope of Exxon Nuclear's fuel cycle ser-
vices, Mr. Dickeman proceeded to assemble development teams for
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RAYMOND LOUIS DICKEMAN
67
proposed fuel-reprocessing project, for a centrifuge uranium enrich-
ment project, and for a laser isotope separation (enrichment) project.
In each case the work of these teams was rated in peer reviews as
being of the highest quality, although the projects themselves had to
be halted when it became evident that the necessary governmental
approvals to proceed commercially could not be obtained.
In recognition of these achievements, Raymond Dickeman was
elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1978. He also
served as Director of the Atomic Industrial Forum, Director of the
American Nuclear Energy Council, and was a Charter Member of
the Tri-City Nuclear Industrial Council. He was a member of the
American Nuclear Society and the American Physical Society and
served on numerous national, regional, and local advisory groups.
In 1970 he was awarded a Distinguished Service Citation by the
University of Wisconsin.
The preceding factual and chronological review of Ray Dicke-
man's professional career can better be understood by a brief discus-
sion of his personal characteristics, his motivations, and his methods
for getting things done.
The secret of his success was an ability to analyze major technical
problems and conceive solutions with such unassailable thorough-
ness and logic that even the most skeptical of his co-workers would
nearly always be convinced and willingly commit themselves to tasks
and objectives of extreme difficulty. They did this because they were
convinced that the program was sound; they knew it would succeed
and they wanted to be part of a winning team. To be part of a
Dickeman team meant full acceptance of Ray Dickeman's charac-
teristics of results-oriented drive and complete dedication to meeting
all commitments that had been made with regard to time, cost,
quality, safety, or other criteria. Some were willing, but unable to
stand the pace.
Ray Dickeman's ability to assess a technical-economic problem
had its roots in the intellectual intensity and diversity of the man.
His formal training was only a starter to a lifelong program of
intellectual growth whereby he became personally expert in every
major aspect of the nuclear industry—reactor research, design, engi-
neering and operation, nuclear fuels development and manufactur-
ing, weapons materials production, chemical reprocessing, and
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
waste treatment and enrichment processes. He augmented this tech-
nical expertise with an equally impressive grasp of political, institu-
tional, and economic considerations important to the nuclear
industry.
He was able to conceive the essential outlines of the solutions to
major interdisciplinary problems that integrated all important inter-
acting considerations. He could do this because he knew so well the
limits of the state of the art for every major parameter of the prob-
lem. He knew which limits were hard and not worth the effort to
change, and he knew which limits were soft and thus likely to yield to
well-conceived, determined attack. Thus, he did not attempt to
blindly extrapolate from the past; he could always show, specifically,
how and why the past could be improved on and, to use one of his
favorite terms, why some improvement program was "do-able."
This came through to intelligent colleagues and accounted for their
willingness to make all-out personal commitments to his programs.
Ray Dickeman was a brilliant man, and a favorite pastime
seemed to be the intricate and subtle movements of his own mind
and its competitive interplay with others. Almost any social or infor-
mal business occasion, whether playing golf or poker or conversing
at the dinner table, was for him an opportunity for exercise of wits or
for a carefully calculated wager; in his mind there was no opinion,
no attitude, no position that was not somehow negotiable. One of
the fondest memories of this observer is of occasional wide-ranging
intellectual jousts with Ray Dickeman that, although seldom won,
were always stimulating.
Those who have seen and heard Ray Dickeman perform in the
board rooms and conference rooms of his life will not soon forget
him. Characteristically, after a period of confused and contradictory
expressions of opinions by others on some important and complex
subject, he would rise and proceed to outline, in perfect order and
without benefit of notes, the essential nature of the problem and the
optimum approach to its solution. Among the Hanford technical
community, and perhaps elsewhere as well, the Dickeman steel-trap
mind is almost a legend. With Ray Dickeman's death, a vital intel-
lect has passed on.
The last five years of his life were spent quietly as a part-time
consultant. He is survived by his wife, Janice, and five daughters.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
ray dickeman
