Anthony R. Buhl

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Anthony R. Buhl

President/CEO, EnergX LLC

Education

  • B.S. 1963 Nuclear Engineering, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • M.S. 1964 Engineering Science, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Ph.D. 1967 Engineering Science, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Anthony (Tony) R. Buhl was born and grew up ten miles outside of nearby Clinton, Tennessee. He was the youngest of eight children in a family that lived in a two-room house. No one in the area had gone to high school, much less college, and Buhl changed everything.

At the Southern Appalachian Science Fair which Buhl participated in at his high school, Buhl met Pete Pasqua and Isbell Tipton (both UT professors co-chairing the science fair). Pasqua suggested Buhl think about a career in engineering, which he ultimately followed through on.

During his senior year, Buhl’s high school chemistry teacher suggested that he should apply for scholarships at the University of Tennessee. Although Buhl knew little about higher education, he applied for the scholarship, got it, and enrolled at UT in the Nuclear Engineering Department.

Buhl received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees, all in nuclear engineering and engineering science, from UT. He then enlisted in the Army, where he was commissioned as an officer upon receiving his bachelor’s degree and served active duty as a captain. After his military service, Buhl went to work as an Instrumentation and Controls Engineer at ORNL for three years.

Buhl later served as a senior executive at both the DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and was the first Director of Risk Assessment at NRC. He has led many complex independent oversight assessments of high-risk projects and activities that led to major safety culture modifications.

Buhl led many successful turnarounds of major projects and organizations, with special emphasis on facilitating changes in their safety cultures. He served as the corporate site-wide ESH&Q Vice President at Rocky Flats and Hanford, two large high-risk DOE closure sites; as president and CEO of a public company that provided management consulting, engineering, and software development; and as CEO of a private company that offered environmental restoration and risk assessment products and services. In addition, Buhl was in the control room throughout the recovery from the accident at the Three Mile Island (TMI) power plant in Harrisburg, PA in 1979.

During the years following the TMI incident, Buhl managed the Industry Degraded Core Rulemaking (IDCOR) Program, the power industry’s response to the accident at TMI. IDCOR established comprehensive, integrated, well-documented and technically sound positions on all issues related to severe accidents in commercial nuclear power plants and thus provided the basis for industry participation in their resolution. Buhl served as the industry spokesman with the NRC to resolve severe accident issues. In all, Buhl has traveled to 39 countries in relation to nuclear safety issues.

In 1997, Buhl co-founded EnergX, LLC, based in Oak Ridge, which provides solutions in hazardous and radioactive waste management, environmental services, and energy technology to the DOE and electric utilities. He is still president and CEO of EnergX, and looks forward to further development within his company.

The American Nuclear Society elected Buhl as a Fellow for his special expertise in nuclear safety and risk assessment. He is also a Professional Engineer (PE).