Arpad Academy

Dr. J. Louis Kovach of Columbus, Ohio

President, Nucon International Inc.Visiting Scientist Harvard School of Public Health. Specialty: industrial and nuclear safety and waste processing.

Julius Louis Kovach was born in Mezőhegyes, Hungary. His father worked in an oil refinery, where Louis spent a lot of his time growing up. He began his education in Szeged and then Budapest, Hungary. His educational pursuits were then continued in Vancouver, Canada and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, resulting in degrees in Chemical Engineering. After his departure from Hungary in 1956, he gained employment in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, in Canada. In connection with his work, he found that fallout from Soviet A-bomb tests resulted in contamination of a product used as a film base.  The work experience in monitoring the fallout and taking countermeasures resulted in being transferred to the USA and working on nuclear submarine radiation control. He developed a product to remove critical contaminants from the operating naval reactors and air cleaning techniques for the initial Polaris nuclear submarines and all subsequent US Navy nuclear vessels. In the USA, he began working as a research engineer, and then became director of research for Barnebey-Cheney Company, air and liquid cleaning material and equipment supplier, in Columbus Ohio.

In 1968 he became a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission’s Operational Safety Division, on an individual basis, and he still maintains his consultancy through the transitions of the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to the US Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) and now the US Department of Energy (DOE). He was representing the US in various Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) functions from 1970 until 2015. He ultimately became chairman of International Atomic Energy Agency and OECD Nuclear Energy Agency committees regarding source term and gaseous waste processing during normal operation, in accidents and following sever accidents in nuclear facilities. He participated in nuclear reactor accident recoveries and the arduous clean-up activities for the waste from plutonium production at the Hanford Site in Washington State and at the Savannah River Laboratory as a Senior Technical Advisor. He was also a member of the documentation preparation team for waste repository licensing at the Yucca Mountain Project. He was chairman of several Subcommittees of CONAGT and ASME task
group writing standards for nuclear facility gaseous waste processing.

Since 1968 Louis has served in the capacity of visiting lecturer and/or visiting scientist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and since 2017 in the Executive and Continuing Professional Education Program at Harvard.

In 1972, during the expansion of the civilian nuclear programs, he founded Nuclear Consulting Services Inc., (now NUCON International Inc.) a worldwide supplier of radiation control equipment and materials located in Columbus Ohio. He invented many new products both for nuclear and chemical industries, like Reverse Brayton Cycle units, mercury control materials, and in his recent work with 3D Biopsy, developing special procedures to better monitor biopsy samples. NUCON is the largest supplier of radioiodine and mercury control materials in the world. Current major nuclear work relates to the new water, gas and sodium cooled modular reactor component designs, and specialized vapor control equipment for the Hanford nuclear waste storage tanks.

In addition to many technical societies, he is a retired major in the Civil Air Patrol and a member of the Friends of Hungary Foundation. He resides in Lewis Center, Ohio. His main hobby is history and enjoys reading a vast trove of history books. He has two children; Louis Meredith Kovach, an avid hot air balloon enthusiast, who unfortunately passed away at the age of 21 in 1981, and Paul Elek Kovach, who is continuing his father’s endeavors at NUCON.