In Memoriam- Dale Bridenbaugh

In Memoriam:  Dale Bridenbaugh

Dale Bridenbaugh, courageous figure in the fight for nuclear safety and longtime friend and colleague of Bridge the Gap, died on May 26, 2025.

On February 2, 1976, Dale Bridenbaugh and two nuclear engineering colleagues, Dick Hubbard and Greg Minor, publicly resigned from the General Electric Company, declaring they could not in good conscience continue to work on nuclear power but would instead work to oppose it.  They immediately went from working for GE’s nuclear division to campaigning for the California Safeguards Initiative, which resulted in a statute, still in effect, barring new nuclear plants in the state until and unless there is a solution to the high-level radioactive waste problem.  They gave up their careers, with no certainty as to how they would be able to continue to support their families, as the price of conscience.

Dale began his engineering career at the birth of the nuclear power era, initially assigned by GE to work on the Dresden reactor, the first U.S. commercial nuclear plant.  He subsequently worked on many others, in this country and abroad, including the Fukushima facility, which used a GE-designed Boiling Water Reactor (BWR).

In 1976, he was a top manager at GE, with responsibility for ensuring the safety of the BWR’s Mark I containment.  He concluded it had not been demonstrated to be capable of withstanding the dynamic loads in an accident.  After trying unsuccessfully to get GE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and U.S. operators of BWRs to take steps to resolve the safety problems, he resigned from GE, testified before Congress, and worked for decades thereafter to try to end nuclear risks.

He was a valuable and courageous ally of CBG for years, source of both inspiration and technical expertise.  During the Fukushima accident, for example, where the GE-designed reactors melted down and containments failed at three reactors, we worked together to help explain the disaster to national and international media.

Even in his 90s, Dale continued to help.  In 2023, Dale and CBG’s Dan Hirsch completed a short video on the Fukushima accident and the current controversy over plans to dump more than a million tons of radioactively contaminated water into the Pacific.  You can watch it on the CBG website.

Dale – and Char, his wife of 66 years – paid a significant price to follow their conscience.  Their long principled example was invaluable beyond words.