Gudmundur S. (Bo) Bodvarsson

Gudmundur Svavar (Bo) Bodvarsson (November 11, 1952 – November 29, 2006) was director of the Laboratory’s Earth Sciences Division since 2001 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Bodvarsson was a pioneer in 3-D mathematical modeling of unsaturated zone flow and transport. He led efforts to ensure a Nevada desert mountain Yucca Mountain the federal government's proposed disposal site for high-level nuclear waste, could safely store the most radioactive nuclear wastes for tens of thousands of years. He was a pioneer in many aspects of the management of the division, from the promotion of a safety culture to the strengthening of the intellectual depth and reach of Earth Sciences. He was especially admired his honest and straightforward way of dealing with all people and how he was carrying out his vision for the Division, said Berkeley Lab Director Steven Chu. As well, Bodvarsson published a number of popular and technical books on hydrology.

Early life and Education

He was born Gudmundur Bodvarsson in Ljosafoss, Iceland, a town of about 100 people. He was valedictorian of a school built on his grandfather's land. He came to the United States in 1972 to attend Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics in 1974 – graduating Summa Cum Laude. He earned a Master’s degree in civil engineering at North Carolina State University in 1976. Two years after graduating, he moved to Berkeley with Mary Pratt, his wife and he received his doctorate from UC Berkeley in 1981.

Career at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Bo Bodvarsson joined the Berkeley Lab staff in 1980 while he was still a graduate research assistant at UC-Berkeley. Prior to that, he’d worked as a research engineer at the Icelandic Building Research Institute. The young Icelander plunged himself into learning about hot geothermal pockets miles deep and how to turn their steam into electricity. Figuring out the mysteries of the deep Earth from a few, well-placed borings helped get him a job among Lawrence Berkeley lab's top earth scientists.

Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California (www.lbl.gov).

Said Paul Witherspoon, a retired scientist who brought Bodvarsson to Berkeley Lab and was his mentor, “Bo was a gifted individual and one of the hardest working graduate students I ever had at Berkeley. He carried this approach with him in pursuing his career at the Lab and developed into a disciplined scientist. No problem in his field was too tough to handle. The growth and success of ESD stands as a tribute to his remarkable abilities.”

He worked on geothermal research until the mid-1980s, when he began research on nuclear waste storage. Bo Bodvarsson led a team tapped to investigate the movement of water inside Yucca Mountain and figure out whether its mammoth volumes of volcanic ash could lock up casks of spent nuclear fuel indefinitely.

Said Ernest Majer, a long-time Berkeley Lab colleague and deputy director of the Earth Sciences Division, “Having known Bo for nearly 30 years I am deeply saddened by his passing and aware of the tremendous loss at a professional as well personal level. There was not a person I know who was a stronger advocate for his people and who fought harder for what he believed. He almost single-handedly elevated the quality of the science and work within the Earth Sciences Division. His vitality, insight and personality will be sorely missed.” As a scientist, Bodvarsson made his mark by leading the development of a 3-D site-scale model of Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the proposed site of a permanent underground repository for high-level radioactive waste. This model was used to characterize hydrogeologic conditions inside the mountain under a wide range of different scenarios.

Bodvarsson and his research group also helped develop a hydrological model of Yucca Mountain that worked on a much finer scale than the original site model. Building on his knowledge of geothermal formations, he contributed to detailed investigations of the site's underground hydrology. He had his greatest impact leading the development of 3-D scale models of seepage patterns inside the mountain under a wide range of scenarios.

The models were designed to help pinpoint where seepage might pose a risk of corroding waste containers, which the United States Department of Energy proposes placing in tunnels in thick volcanic rock more than 1,200 feet under the surface and above the water table. This set of hydrological models is used to accurately calculate seepage into waste emplacement tunnels under various hydrogeologic and climatic conditions.

Co-workers said they enjoyed working with him because he was always lighthearted. “Even during very serious project negotiations, he really had his own way of being witty,” said deputy program head Yvonne Tsang.

Based on physical evidence and results from their models, Bo Bodvarsson persuaded himself that Yucca Mountain was as dry and as good as anyone could hope for in an underground nuclear dump.

Critics and the state of Nevada say the mountain is unsuitable, and it has not been licensed to receive the waste piling up at 104 nuclear reactors nationwide.

Said long-time Berkeley Lab colleague, Sally Benson, “Bo was an outstanding leader of the Yucca Mountain Project. His passion, drive and scientific leadership made his team of hydrologists, geochemists and geophysicists star performers. That had to be one of the most challenging earth sciences problems to work on in the world, and no one did it better than Bo and the team he led.”

"He was really dynamic; he was larger than life," said Peter Persoff, a scientist who worked with Mr. Bodvarsson from 2000 to 2005. "Not your stereotypical scientist cloistered in the lab. Not a geek, not a nerd -- just the opposite."

Bo, The Avid Sportsman

Bodvarsson also was a towering figure in Bay Area amateur sports, a relentless competitor in two-man beach volleyball and a powerful scorer in more than 20 years of senior league soccer.

"He's just a tremendous natural athlete," said Marvin Vinik, coach of the Berkeley Fog, a top-division team for over-30 players in the East Bay. "Whatever sport he touched, he was just fabulous."

Mary Pratt, Bodvarsson's former wife, said her husband channeled his stress from work into sports. Bodvarsson played for a semi-pro soccer team, The Swedes, in San Francisco and for years terrorized Bay Area beaches in four- and two-man volleyball games. Some members of the volleyball community have posted some classic Bo stories online. [http://memorialbo.blogspot.com/]

"He never did anything halfway," she said. "He just loved two-man sand ball, and he played in lots and lots of tournaments with people half his age."

Bodvarsson also loved tennis and basketball. But outside of volleyball, soccer was his game.

"He understood the game really, really well. He was a beautiful player," said Vinik. "He knew how to get open, how to find open people and in the old days he was a scorer, a big scorer, very powerful, very fast."

Stunned as Bodvarsson's death left scientists at the Berkeley lab, the news rocked his soccer team, which has had more than its share of severe injuries this season. Players remembered a big guy with fast feet and a quick, dry wit.

Angelo Commandatore thought he'd regale the Icelander with tales of fly fishing for salmon. "He said, 'Listen, in Iceland we go to the river with a pitchfork and nail the bastards. ... That's how we catch them and this way we always go home with a meal!"

Last Days

Bodvarsson never showed for a soccer game in early November. At the same time, he told colleagues at the Earth Sciences Division that he led at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that he was going on vacation. Instead, Bodvarsson checked into Kaiser Permanente Hospital Oakland, complaining of problems breathing and stomach pains. His health and appetite seemed to improve, and lab coworkers came visiting. Hospital officials informed them on arrival that Bodvarsson had died, one day before he said he was to be released.

He died of a pulmonary embolism and heart failure on November 29, 2006 at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland.

Bo Bodvarsson was survived by two sons, Daniel Bodvarsson, 28, and Erik Ma, 8, and in Iceland, his father Bodvar Stefansson and brothers Reynir and Stefan Bodvarsson. A memorial service was held at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St., Berkeley.

Written works

* Bo Bodvarsson has published over 400 technical and scientific publications and was involved as co-author or contributor on over 1000 publications, presentations, and investigative reports. They are too extensive to list here. To search for specific topics, the following websites can be useful.
* [http://www.lbl.gov Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Public Website]
* [http://www.science.gov/search30/resultList.html?guid=-4a1c999d:10f79e41f8a:-2ac0&ranked=true&startPosition=0&resultCount=25&refresh=true&requestType=USER&displayMode=RANK&finalRefresh=true U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific & Technical Information]
* [http://www.osti.gov/bridge/basicsearch.jsp Information Bridge - U.S.Department of Energy. Office for Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI)]
* [http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/query.cgi?field_1=full_text&field_2=author&value_1=&value_2=bodvarsson&connector_3=and&field_3=ancestor.link&op_3=in&value_3=http%3A%2F%2Frepositories.cdlib.org%2Flbnl&hidden_3=1&x_force_carryover=&format=cover_page&query=Processing... University of California eScholarship Repository]
* [http://scholar.google.com Google Scholar]

References

* [http://www.lbl.gov Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Public Website]
* [http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/ESD-Bodvarsson-obit.html “Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory” obituary by Lynn Yarris published 30 November 2006]
* [http://www.insidebayarea.com/timesstar/ci_4761124 “Alameda Times-Star” obituary By Ian Hoffman, Staff Writer published 2 December 2006]
* [http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/04/BAG93MOR931.DTL "San Francisco Chronicle" obituary by Rick DelVecchio, Chronicle Staff Writer published 4 December 2006]