Q&A: Pete Miller's Journey as a Black Nuclear Engineer

Small modular reactors are all the rage these days, with several promising designs working toward potential deployment early next decade. 

They have Pete Miller to partially thank for it. He’s the one who championed funding for SMR research during his time as assistant secretary for nuclear energy and helped lay the groundwork for the technology to flourish more than a decade ago. 

Miller’s career in nuclear took him places he never would have imagined as a kid growing up on the South Side of Chicago. From Northwestern University to Los Alamos National Laboratory to the halls of the U.S. Department of Energy, he forged his own path as a Black man in a nuclear engineering profession that was — and remains — predominantly white. 

We sat down with Miller to chat about his life, career, racial injustice, and the future of the nuclear energy workforce.  

Q: Tell us about your early life. 

A: I'm from the inner city of Chicago. On the South Side, all of us lived in segregated neighborhoods. We were working class — my dad was a milkman — but in our neighborhood we had black doctors and teachers and lawyers, people of all economic levels. 

Part of my history is that I sat next to and was a friend to Emmett Till, who went to McCosh Elementary School with me. In the summer of 1955, we all said goodbye because we were going on our summers, and he went to Money, Mississippi, and never came back. He was lynched. 

He had a big impact on the start of the Civil Rights Movement. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, in her memoir she said she was thinking of Emmett Till.  

He was a friend of mine, and his death had a big impact on me. 

[Editor’s note: McCosh Elementary School was renamed for Emmett Till in 2006.] 

Q: How did you get interested in nuclear? 

A: I went to a segregated high school, and at that school I had a physics teacher who had a Ph.D. He taught high school physics because he couldn't get any other job as a physicist. That got me really interested in science in general. 

Then when I left there and went to the Military Academy at West Point, our choices of classes were basically zero. There was a curriculum that was fixed until you were a senior, and when you were a senior you had one elective.  

We had a choice between civil engineering and nuclear engineering. And I looked at the nuclear engineering textbook and saw these nuclei with electrons running around them and said, “I'm gonna go do that one!” So I took that one class, and it hooked me. 

Eventually, after I served in Vietnam and left the Army, I studied nuclear engineering at Northwestern University and got my doctorate there. My dissertation was on computational methods of neutron transport. 

Q: Let's talk about your time at Los Alamos National Laboratory. What did you start out doing there, and how did your career evolve? 

A: What attracted me to Los Alamos was the computing power there, and the fact that the most famous person in my field — Bengt Carlson, from the Manhattan Project — and the leaders of his group came to a talk I gave at the American Nuclear Society meeting and expressed interest in my work. 

They were like gods to me, you know? I had used all of their papers and references in my dissertation, and here they were in the flesh at my talk! They invited me to Los Alamos for an interview, and after a couple of trips down there I suggested to my wife that maybe we could move from Evanston, Illinois, to New Mexico — it’s a big move. So I arrived in Los Alamos with my family in 1974. 

I first was in Group T-1, in the Theoretical Division. I was a new guy on the block, but I had leadership experience, so they made me the group leader.  

Shortly thereafter I became the head of the civilian nuclear energy part of Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is a small part — it's a nuclear weapons lab. Then I was promoted to associate director for energy programs overseeing all the energy work, and then I became associate director for physics and math. After that I became deputy lab director for science and technology, and that was the job from which I retired. 

Q: Can you speak about the diversity efforts at Los Alamos?

A: At that time, the lower-level jobs were all the jobs of people of color and the “big jobs” were all the jobs of, basically, white males. And so this was a challenge that that we faced.  

I was fortunate to have lab directors that were always interested in figuring out a way to make this more equitable. So Director Sig Hecker asked me to be diversity director and form working groups, which had never happened at Los Alamos.  

We started a women's diversity working group, an African-American group, a Native American group, a Hispanic group, and it allowed us to learn more from direct communication with people. It was very eye-opening to a lot of us about what some of the issues are. 

Q: In 2009, you became the first African-American to be appointed assistant secretary for nuclear energy. Looking back on that time, were there moments that were particularly challenging or that you were particularly proud of? 

A: Technically you're right — I was the first Black assistant secretary for nuclear energy. But I was not the first Black American to run nuclear energy in the Department of Energy.  

That was Bill Magwood. During his time, it was called “director of the Office of Nuclear Energy.” So I always thought of myself as the second Black assistant secretary. 

Now, I would say there are a couple things I'm really proud of. My deputy was Pete Lyons at the time, and we came in together and we basically started the small modular reactor program in the Department of Energy. 

We wanted to figure out what was the next big thing after the [Westinghouse AP1000 reactor] that the federal government could get behind. And we said, well, small modular reactors. We didn't invent the name, but we went to the White House Office of Management and Budget and we sold them on starting federal support for SMRs. 

I'm also proud of defending NEUP, the Nuclear Energy University Program. 

The thing that was by far the most challenging was testifying before the United States Congress. I'd never experienced anything like that.  

Q: According to DOE’s USEER report, Black workers make up about 12 percent of the nuclear energy workforce. With nuclear energy heading into this new era of advanced reactors, why is diversity an important part of that transition? 

A: I think having more diversity in the professional ranks of nuclear, as well as in all the other STEM areas, is critically important. Mainly because throughout our recent history as a country — and probably even more so in the next century — STEM is going to drive the direction in which society goes. 

Artificial intelligence is going to influence how everything emerges in the future. And because it's so data-driven, the people who put this data in need to have experiences that are appropriate to everyone. That’s one big reason the nuclear workforce needs to reflect the population at large. 

I can give other examples, too, like environmental justice — locations of reactors and nuclear waste sites. How do you make sure people with little power aren't disadvantaged in the decision-making process? 

Q: What would you say to someone who's an aspiring nuclear engineer or nuclear scientist? 

A: I would say that this is field is wonderful in so many ways. But the thing I love about it the most is that it's small enough that you get to know people who are in the field. I mean it’s a community, it’s a real community. 

Our area is small, and yet so powerful and so challenging. You need to know about everything from the nuclear fuel cycle to our interface with national security. It's just one of the most rich and challenging fields I think you can be in. 

Warren F. “Pete” Miller Jr. served as assistant secretary for nuclear energy from 2009 to 2010. He spent 27 years of his career at Los Alamos National Laboratory, holding numerous roles overseeing science and nuclear energy programs until his retirement from the lab in 2001. He is a Vietnam veteran, Bronze Star recipient, American Nuclear Society fellow, and an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering. Today, Miller continues to work on nuclear issues through leadership positions with several organizations, including the Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute at Texas A&M University.