Nuclear Grand Challenges at the ANS 2016 Winter Meeting

ANS President Andy Klein presents his Nuclear Grand Challenge initiative at the President's Special Session.

Last night, American Nuclear Society President Andy Klein, along with a large room full of ANS members, undertook an important step in Klein's "Nuclear Grand Challenges" initiative.  The many dozens of members attending had their first chance to personally interact with and participate in Klein's vision for ANS' near and mid-term future.

The Nuclear Grand Challenges concept was introduced to the ANS at the prior Annual Meeting, held last June in New Orleans.  The concept is itself rather simple:  Professional societies such as ANS from time to time create internal initiatives to drive forward whatever profession it is that their membership is populated by.  This specific initiative will, at least on the part of ANS, determine a number of specific technical problems or hurdles facing nuclear energy or nuclear technologies - of course, with the aim of directing effort at the overcoming of these challenges.

Klein feels that this program will be his hallmark as ANS President.  Klein was quoted recently in the print publication Nuclear News as saying that he believes that such a project should not just be one of the society's leader, but rather a project for the entire membership of the society; he was adamant last evening that this initiative not be his, but rather the society's. For that reason, Klein has initiated a contact process with the ANS membership; members anywhere can go at any time to www.ans.org/challenges to enter their ideas for major technical challenges facing nuclear technologies.  (Members can also log on to ANS Collaborate and converse directly with their Professional Divisions, a process already well underway in some Divisions.)

Participants discuss suggestions for the Nuclear Grand Challenges.

Grand Challenges at ANS Winter 2016

Last evening's event however was the first 'face to face' live event bringing membership together to work on developing what Klein hopes will be "somewhere between six and ten" Grand Challenges.

Klein told attendees that the plan is "to identify, accumulate, analyze, vet, select, release and most importantly, promote a set of technical (with the emphasis on 'technical') ANS Nuclear Grand Challenges that need to be addressed by the 2030 time frame.  These are professional and technical in focus; they are designed to improve the economic, political and public perception of the various nuclear technologies."  Klein said that he wanted to help mobilize the whole ANS membership around a central, forward moving project and that it would be done through the Professional Divisions.  Klein told the members that this was an "all hands project."  Klein told the audience that Divisions should keep all the Challenges they generate but that only a select six to ten total would be moved into the national initiative and actively announce and publicize as a whole organization.  Klein imagines, he said, that these Grand Challenges and pathways to their solutions would then very likely become the sorts of things discussed at future ANS meeting technical sessions and in embedded topicals familiar to attendees.

The timeline for the initiative moves well into 2017.  Initially, from now through March 2017 the Divisions will each identify (by popular submission and then selection) one to three Grand Challenges each.  In March and April 2017, the Division Chairs (essentially acting as a committee) will select out of all the various divisional submissions six to ten overall Grand Challenges that will be made the official challenges to be met by the society.  According to Klein there may be as many as 66 challenges submitted to the group of Division Chairs, making it a serious job to whittle down to around ten only.  These final 'operative' challenges will be formally announced next year at the ANS Annual Meeting in June (being held in San Francisco).  After that time, ANS will work to bring attention to these challenges and get policy makers, the NRC, vendors and the public aware of these challenges and solicit their support to ANS in solving them.

John Kotek, Acting Assistant Secretary, US Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, spoke to the attendees about some of the things that might constitute challenges that ANS could focus on; these points echoed his talk in the Opening Plenary about Secretary Moniz's eight significant points for advancing nuclear energy (see ANS Nuclear Cafe's reporting on that presentation here.)

Engaged ANS members consider suggestions for President Klein's initiative.

All of the tables in the venue were labeled with cards denoting the ANS Divisions, and members were divided up to work with their peers by Division in discussing and identifying challenges (after listening to Klein and other speakers.)  About 100 suggestions were received at the session (and later, according to ANS Communications Director) signifying a great involvement by those attending the session.  The cards will be routed to the Divisions along with the suggestions obtained through the other channels.  The Nuclear Grand Challenges initiative is on the move!