Executive Team
Meet our Leaders
Learn about the unique backgrounds they bring to their work at the XLNT Foundation
EXECUTIVE TEAM MEMBERS
JERRY CUTTLER, PRESIDENT
Dr. Jerry Cuttler is the President of the XLNT Foundation, an organization dedicated to overcoming the LNT model problem and facilitating full utilization of beneficial effects of radiation, for enhanced health.
Dr. Cuttler received his BASc-Eng degree (1964) in engineering physics from the University of Toronto and his MSc and DSc degrees (1967-1971) in nuclear sciences and engineering from the Israel Institute of Technology. Until 1974, he managed a radiation detector company.
At Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, he led the design and procurement of the reactor control, safety systems and radiation monitoring instrumentation for the first CANDU-6 reactors, the four-reactor Pickering-B station and the four-reactor Bruce-B station. He was engineering manager of AECL’s Bruce-B Project, resident engineering manager in Romania, engineering manager district heating reactors, manager of services to the eight-reactor Pickering station, engineering integration manager of the CANDU-9 Project and manager of technical services including Y2K support to 28 reactors.
Dr. Cuttler has been an active member of Professional Engineers Ontario, Canadian Nuclear Society (president 1995-1996), American Nuclear Society, American Physical Society, Canadian Nuclear Association, Health Physics Society, Canadian Radiation Protection Association and the International Dose-Response Society. He has written hundreds of technical reports for nuclear stations, tens of conferences papers and articles for peer-reviewed journals.
Starting in 2000, he provided services to Ontario Power Generation for returning Pickering Unit-4 to service and extending the life of the Pickering-B station, to AECL for completing reactors to supply radioisotopes for diagnostic scanning, to Bruce Power for restarting reactors 1/2 and extending the Bruce-B reactor lives for 30 years.
Since 1995, Dr. Cuttler has been assessing the health effects of ionizing radiation and drawing international attention to radiation hormesis. He presented tens of papers at many conferences pointing out that low exposures are stimulating for curing infections, extending life and reducing the incidences of cancer and congenital malformations. He organized adaptive response sessions at nuclear energy conferences, inviting renowned radiobiologists to present remarkable evidence. He has urged many oncologists to use total-body low-dose radiation in cancer therapy. He has intervened with regulators with submissions that identify beneficial effects following low doses and debunk the LNT assumption. He arranged presentations by world specialists in low dose at hospitals, universities, nuclear centers and societies. He continues to communicate positive low dose information and fight politicized radiation scares on the Internet and at professional and social clubs.
CHARLES PENNINGTON, SECRETARY
Charles Pennington is the Secretary of the XLNT Foundation, an organization dedicated to overcoming the LNT model problem and facilitating full utilization of beneficial effects of radiation, for enhanced health.
Charles W. Pennington is an executive level consultant in spent nuclear fuel storage/transport and radiological design and licensing, having retired from NAC International, Inc. in 2013. As a corporate officer and Vice President at NAC, Mr. Pennington led consulting, development, engineering, nuclear analysis, licensing, and business development over his 18 years there. He also served as an IAEA consultant on technology issues, and as the Director of NAC’s Nuclear Spent Fuel Academy, an educational colloquium on nuclear spent fuel.
Following graduation from Duke University on an NROTC Scholarship with a degree in mathematics, Mr. Pennington served in the US Navy Nuclear Power program as an officer aboard a nuclear submarine. He held positions of responsibility for both the submarine's reactor and for its nuclear weapons. Following this, he received an MS degree from North Carolina State University in Nuclear Engineering and an MBA from the University of Connecticut in Marketing and Finance.
Mr. Pennington led Business Development at NAC for many years prior to his retirement. As Group Senior Vice President of Engineering and Development, he directed NAC’s successful development of several spent fuel technologies. Earlier, Mr. Pennington served as the Group Senior Vice President for Consulting in all nuclear fuel cycle areas.
Before joining NAC, Mr. Pennington was Vice President, Technology and Business Development, for Holtec International, leading the company's initial development of nuclear spent fuel dry storage and transport technology. Prior to that, Mr. Pennington served as Vice President at Transnuclear Inc., a subsidiary of AREVA, leading design development, commercialization, and sales efforts for a number of modular storage and transport systems, resulting in the successful deployment of these systems. He also performed studies for entities like the Electric Power Research Institute on spent fuel technologies and economics, resulting in early testing of such systems.
Mr. Pennington has been involved with nuclear energy for almost 50 years. He holds six patents for nuclear technology involving criticality control, radiation shielding, packaging design, closure/sealing systems, and heat transfer designs. There are more than 600 spent fuel storage and transportation systems deployed globally for which he first led the development, then became responsible for their sales. He is also active in publishing and public outreach efforts, having authored more than 60 published industry papers and journal articles involving nuclear technology, ionizing radiation, and comparative assessments of radiation exposure from nuclear and non-nuclear industries. Additionally, he has provided expert witness services for utilities, supporting their licensing, state approval, and litigation activities, and has delivered both closed-door and public presentations at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as the National Academy of Sciences on the safety and security of dry spent fuel storage and transport. His experience includes responsibility for the commercialization of more than a dozen major storage and transport systems involving both domestic and foreign technologies. In 2010 and 2011, he provided significant input at the request of the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future regarding the comparative safety of nuclear plants and nuclear spent fuel storage and transport systems. He now works with Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information (SARI) in opposition to the application of the scientifically flawed Linear No-Threshold (LNT) hypothesis to low-dose, ionizing radiation and has published several papers and letters with his colleagues in SARI on the LNT hypothesis.
LESLIE CORRICE, TREASURER
Leslie Corrice has a Bachelor’s degree in both Nuclear Science & Technology and Environmental Biology. He also has a Master’s degree in Philosophy. He is am a member of the American Nuclear Society, National Education Association, and Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information. His first career of 21 years was in nuclear power, including being (in order) - a nuclear power plant operator, health physics specialist, environmental monitor, health physics design engineer, public relations spokesperson, public education coordinator and emergency planner. His second career of 15 years was a high school math and science teacher of high-functioning students with diagnosed learning disabilities. He continues to tutor privately and has become a free-lance writer. He has a weekly blog on the continuing situation with the Fukushima nuclear accident (Fukushima Accident Updates), and has written two E-books; Fukushima: The First Five Days and Kimin: Japan’s Forgotten People.
Through-out his adult life, Les has been subjected to numerous confusions and misconceptions that are the basis of aversions for nuclear power plants and all sources of radiation exposure. He hase created a website (The Hiroshima Syndrome) devoted to showing that most, if not all existent nuclear and radiation aversions stem from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Perhaps the most damaging misconception is the wide-spread belief that radiation exposure, no matter how miniscule, can be deadly. His interest in the XLNT Foundation stems from his desire to resolve fear of radiation exposure associated with nuclear energy and the medical community, which needlessly prohibits the world’s ever-expanding population from experiencing the best-possible health and prosperity.