Rick Parks, Ed Gishel, and Larry King were of the engineers involved in cleaning up Three Mile Island after one of the reactors experienced partial meltdown on March 29, 1979. They felt that the cleanup was being rushed to meet a specific time schedule, and because of this, Nuclear Regulator Commission (NRC)regulations and standard nuclear engineering procedures were not being fully performed. They openly resisted these unsafe practices, and they experienced retaliation personally as well as professionally. The affair culminated in rather ugly legal proceedings.

Rick Parks received the Carl Barus Award (originally the IEEE SSIT Award) for Outstanding Service in the Public Interest from the IEEE Society in 1986 for the role that he played in trying to stop the misconduct.

1. Barus Award Winners
2. Engineering
3. Nuclear Science
4. Positive Outcomes: Case Studies
5. whistleblowing