Nicholas Kaufman

Nicholas Kaufman of Belfort Instruments earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Stanford University in 1962 and a Master’s in Engineering Science in 1963. After he completed his education, Nicholas Kaufman moved to Idaho Falls, Idaho, where he began his career as a Research Scientist. At the Phillips Petroleum Company (now ConocoPhillips Company), he performed research and engineering at the National Reactor Testing Station for more than a decade. He then joined Aerojet Nuclear Company, where he managed the enginnering and safety efforts for seven nuclear reactors.

Nicholas Kaufman’s next endeavor took him to EG&G; Idaho (now a part of URS Corporation), where he was Director of the Loss-of-Fluid Test (LOFT) Research Programme, the world’s largest safety project for nuclear reactors. In 1978, he traveled to Three Mile Island to help determine the cause of the accident and work on recovery strategies. The year 1980 took Nicholas Kaufman to Olympia, Washington, where he functioned as Completion Manager on a construction site for a nuclear power station.

Three years later he took over as President at UNC Nuclear Industries, a subsidiary of the United Nuclear Corporation, in Richland, Washington. In this capacity, Nicholas Kaufman assumed responsibility for the world's largest nuclear reactor, working under contract to the United States Government to manage 40 percent of the Hanford nuclear site. During his stint at Hanford, Nicholas Kaufman of Belfort Instruments founded three different companies: UNC Geotech, which dealt with environmental cleanup of thousands of sites in seven states that had been contaminated with uranium; UNC Remediation, which provided safety oversight of the disposal of chemical munitions and the cleanup of a nuclear weapons test site; and UNC Analytical Services, which planned and tracked the assembly and manufacture of nuclear warheads.

After Nicholas Kaufman of Belfort Instruments held several more positions in the field of nuclear manufacture and cleanup, he and his partner, Bruce Robinson, merged several companies and built a $150 million international company, Scientech, Inc., which specialized in providing technical support for nuclear utility companies.