Wanda I. Munn, F.SWE
1931–2025
Early woman nuclear engineer, swift learner, public officeholder
A trailblazer in nuclear energy engineering and Society of Women Engineers section founder, Wanda I. Munn, F.SWE, died on July 23 at the age of 93. A nontraditional student, returning professional, and city council member, Munn was a SWE Fellow and life member.
Munn graduated from high school in Central Texas at 16, having completed all courses offered, including physics. She enrolled at The University of Texas to pursue a medical degree, left at age 18 to marry, and moved to various locations to accommodate her husband’s service in the U.S. Air Force.
At 42, divorced and supporting two sons, her ailing mother and sister, and her nephew, Munn returned to college. She wanted to pursue a technical degree from Oregon State University, or OSU, where she had been working for the head of the nuclear engineering department. At first, she considered computer programming. “I’d taken a computer class and had learned the terrible lesson that, if you put a period in the wrong place, a comma in the wrong place, the bloody machine would not do what you thought you told it to do,” she told SWE Archivist Troy Eller English in a 2021 oral history.
When she told her director she wanted to pursue nuclear engineering, he told her, “You mustn’t set yourself up for failure,” she told Eller English. Munn was undaunted, and while pursuing her degree, helped found the OSU SWE Student Section in 1976. She served as its charter president and in many other leadership positions in the section. Munn also served as the president of the OSU student section of the American Nuclear Society, or ANS.
In 1977, Munn graduated OSU after three years with a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering and moved to Richland, Washington, to work for Westinghouse Hanford Company. She worked on criticality safeguards, a sodium and argon sampling system, a fuel monitoring system, and the reactor and head compartment design-build project. Munn received the McCall’s Life-Pattern Award for women reentering the workforce in 1977.
In 1982, she earned an MBA at the University of Washington, and by the mid-1980s she had become a reactor safety engineer at Westinghouse Hanford, providing an overview of reactor and public safety matters for the Fast Flux Test Facility, a research nuclear reactor.
Munn served as the SWE Northwest Regional Conference chair in 1987 and 1993 and received the SWE Distinguished New Engineer award in 1985. She was named a SWE Fellow in 1998, served on the SWE national nominating committee for 1996-1997, and was the national conference program chair in 1996.
The ANS selected Munn for its National Public Communications Award in 1988, and the Washington Society of Professional Engineers named her the Tri-Cities Engineer of the Year in 1993. In 1999, she was admitted to the Oregon State Engineering Hall of Fame.
The Hanford test facility shut down in 1992; Munn went on to represent the United States at the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1993. In 1995 she was elected to the Richland City Council, and in 2001, President George W. Bush appointed her to serve on the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, where she remained until her resignation in 2018.
In 2011, the SWE Eastern Washington Section established the Wanda Munn Endowed Scholarship for nontraditional and reentering students.
She was preceded in death by her parents, sister, youngest son Clay, and her nephew. She is survived by her husband, Yasuhiro Muranaka, her son Than Beck, a granddaughter Lily Beck, and her many friends and colleagues who will miss her intelligence, feistiness, and wit.
Sources
SWE documents, Tri-City Herald, and Nuclear Newswire. Special thanks to Patricia Eng, P.E., for her contributions.
