Thomas Wellock  Thomas Wellock (born 1959) is the American historian for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Trained as both an engineer and a historian, he writes scholarly histories of the regulation of commercial nuclear energy. Until 2010 he was a Professor in the Department of History at Central Washington University, in Ellensburg, Washington in the United States. In 2007 he received the "CWU Phi Kappa Phi Scholar of the Year" Award. His teaching and research interests include environmental history, western history, recent US history, and political history. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1995, with a dissertation published as "" Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. His MA in history is from the University of Toledo; his B.S. in mechanical engineering is from the University of Bridgeport. Wellock's most recent book is "Preserving the Nation: The Conservation and Environmental Movements, 1870-2000," published in 2007.