American Nuclear Society president-elect Eric Loewen on February 17 visited the City College of New York (CCNY). Loewen presented a talk during the noon hour on "Nuclear Reactor Physics at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl" to an audience of about 40 engineering faculty members and students. Most students were from CCNY's mechanical or chemical engineering programs and have taken, or are currently taking, at least one of the college's nuclear engineering concentration courses:

The Mississippi Section of the American Nuclear Society is offering two $1000 college scholarships to Mississippi high school graduates or college undergraduates. Scholarship winners are chosen from state-wide applications.

President Obama has declared "a bold but achievable goal of generating 80 percent of America's electricity from clean sources by 2035." How we are to get there is not spelled out, so there is room for speculation about just what the administration has in mind.

IndyCar is the premier open wheel racing series in the United States. IndyCar features street races, road races, and oval track races around the country, including the world famous Indianapolis 500. "Indy cars" are technologically quite sophisticated, as they are built only for racing. One particular Indy car this season will be sporting a clean, new nuclear-themed look, courtesy of the Entergy, the second largest owner and operator of nuclear power plants in the United States.

The Obama administration, and the Department of Energy, recently released their fiscal year 2012 budget request for nuclear related programs. The budget request is pretty favorable to nuclear, given the current pressure in Washington to cut spending.

The Chicago local section of the American Nuclear Society launched  activities for National Engineers Week a day early on Saturday, February 19, by presenting a student engineering workshop. The event was hosted by the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (MSI), the largest science museum in the western hemisphere. The workshop was part of a series in which high school science achievers learn about different science disciplines and career paths. The workshop included 26 high school students from across Chicago, an MSI education coordinator, and two adult MSI volunteers.

I was not born a geek, but by the time I was a 10-year-old buying books at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, my path was set. Some considered this as an unfortunate background, so I had to learn the hard way how to handle myself in debates  and how to answer aggressive questions. Below, I share what I have learned in defending my position, in the hope that it will help others.

The fuel cycle is a frequent topic in the nuclear blogsphere

This is the 40th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Blogs. The carnival  features blog posts from the leading U.S. nuclear bloggers and is a roundup of featured content from them.

Nominations are now being accepted for two American Nuclear Society awards established to recognize the important contributions of young members and the ANS Young Members Group (YMG) to ANS as a whole.  Nominations for the Young Members Advancement Award and the Young Members Excellence Award are due by July 1, 2011.  Each award is presented annually at the ANS Winter Conference.

Russia and Japan will build the first four of 16 planned reactors

The Institute for National Strategic Studies-a component of the National Defense University-has published a new article examining the potential for using small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) to address the U.S. Department of Defense's (DOD) dependence on civilian power grids. The article also looks at the potential for using SMRs in the field.

I teach students of engineering. Many of them (although certainly not all) prefer logarithms to literature and algebra to anthropology. No doubt they get a fair share of that in my classes, but I try to include a bit of history whenever I can.

President Obama during his 2011 State of the Union address stated that we should have one million electric vehicles (EV) in the United States by 2015. The benefits of that would be to to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to reduce emissions. These are worthy goals. This article will take look at the economic impact of using electric cars, their emissions, and their impact on the electric grid.

Dr. Patrick Moore spoke on February 7 in Richmond, Va., to a National Academy of Sciences panel that is studying the potential for uranium mining in Virginia. Moore appeared as a guest of the Virginia Energy Independence Alliance (VEIA).  A video of his remarks appears below and a full transcript can be found on the VEIA Web site.

The Society opens its 9^th international section

The 39th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Blogs is up at CoolHandNuke. The carnival  features blog posts from the leading nuclear bloggers in the United States.

Don't miss a post! The ANS Nuclear Cafe includes ANS member perspectives on a range of timely nuclear topics and activities. Subscribe by  entering your email address in menu to the right under ANS Nuclear Cafe Email Subscription Service.

Zuckerberg

When Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in 2004, it can be assumed that he did not imagine himself becoming Time's 2010 Person of Year;  he simply wanted to make friends. As a member of the generation that has fully embraced the use of Facebook, I can proclaim that social networking has become a strong part of how I develop my connections with those I meet, both inside and outside the nuclear industry. That Facebook exists only so that teenagers can post whatever floats into their heads-as some Facebook detractors believe-is a huge misconception. On the contrary, I hope that this post helps to explain why we must use social networking sites such as Facebook to our advantage in the new era of nuclear power and technology.

By  Suzanne Hobbs

The View from Vermont