Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

This month’s Nuclear News pays tribute to the people and projects that keep our nuclear power plants running.

In the nuclear industry, “life extension” is a venerable term that broadly describes the care required to sustain the safe and efficient operation of large, complex energy generation facilities for decades to come, some of which you will read about in these pages.

Of late, however, the general concept of life extension has also taken a firmer hold in our societal consciousness.

Whether we absorb it from Instagram videos about some Silicon Valley techie’s quest for immortality or sense it in one of the thousands of dryly written journal articles documenting our increasing ability to control and change life at the molecular level, the promise of extended life and health has universal appeal—and it’s never seemed more within reach than it does right now.

ANS Executive Director/CEO Craig Piercy recently spoke on nuclear power’s potential for answering today’s energy demands as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series at the University of Missouri. He also took part in the ribbon cutting for a large addition to the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR).

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

I find myself saying the expression above a lot these days—to my kids, my wife, my friends, and colleagues. Most recently, I said it to the person sitting next to me after the pilot of our plane—bound for Reagan National Airport a day after the collision of AA flight 5342 and a military Blackhawk helicopter—aborted the landing at the last minute.

I am not sure where I picked up this pronouncement, but I find it to be apropos to the topsy-­turvy moment where we find ourselves in 2025. In addition to the first U.S. commercial airline crash in 15 years, we are witnessing a new presidential administration in its infancy playing by the Silicon Valley rules of “move fast, break things.” We’ve seen DeepSeek, the low-cost Chinese AI that reportedly uses 50–75 percent less energy than its NVIDIA-powered counterparts, tank Constellation’s market value by more than 20 percent in one late-January trading day.

The nomination period for the 2025 Nuclear News 40 Under 40 list is now open. The list aims to highlight those who are putting in the work to become leaders in the nuclear community. All nominations must be submitted online by 11:59 p.m. (CST) on April 30, 2025.

The Hill recently published an opinion piece by Cindy Folkers and Amanda Nichols entitled “They won’t tell you these truths about nuclear energy.” Sadly, after the first sentence, their so-called truth veers into a diatribe of antiscientific fearmongering and misrepresentations.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

Dear Secretary Wright:

On behalf of the U.S. nuclear professional community, I offer our sincere congratulations to you on your becoming the secretary of energy.

By now, I’m sure you have figured out that “Department of Energy” is a misnomer. If the Department of Government Efficiency ever requires truth in advertising, the DOE should be renamed the “Department of Nuclear Weapons, Security, Cleanup, and Sundry Energy and Science Programs.” That’s because more than 60 percent of the DOE’s budget is dedicated to “atomic energy defense activities”—making sure our nuclear bombs work, our aircraft carriers and submarines sail, and our Cold War messes get cleaned up.

In a one-on-one interview with the American Nuclear Society’s chief executive officer/executive director Craig Piercy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioner Annie Caputo shared her journey in the nuclear community and her vision for the future of nuclear energy.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

This month’s Nuclear News features our inaugural 40 Under 40 list of the brightest rising stars in the nuclear field.

The time has clearly come for this feature. The current resurgence of nuclear isn’t just a technological transformation; it’s also a changing of the guard. Consider this: For the first time in modern history, the American Nuclear Society has more members under the age of 40 than over the age of 60.

Of course, for as long as I can remember, the nuclear workforce has always been a bit of a double-humped demographic camel. Picture a nuclear workforce age chart and you will see two distinct peaks, or what a statistician might call a “bimodal distribution.” “Peak 1” is on the right and is centered over the Baby Boomer generation, many of whom entered the industry in its heyday of the 1960s and ’70s. These are the men and women who built the nuclear enterprise as we know it today.

As a primer to the American Nuclear Society Winter Conference and Expo, ANS Executive Director/Chief Executive Craig Piercy hosted a panel discussion titled “The State of Nuclear,” sponsored by the ANS Trustees of Nuclear. The October 29 discussion, the first in a two-part series, featured five thought leaders from the nuclear community as they reviewed the current state of nuclear power. The second panel will take place during the ANS Winter Conference in Orlando, Fla., on November 18.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

As you may have heard, the American Nuclear Society recently entered into a 50/50 joint venture with the Nuclear Energy Institute to host an annual industrywide meeting in late summer, which will replace ANS’s Utility Working Conference and NEI’s Nuclear Energy Assembly. Simply put, we are taking the best of both events to create the ultimate nuclear power meeting of the year. If you are a longtime UWC attendee, you will feel right at home in the aisles of the exhibit hall, or in the working sessions designed to tackle the shared practical challenges operators face. NEI will bring the nuclear C-suite presence along with the freshest insights on industrywide issues.

The U.S. nuclear industry is growing, and we need to get even bigger if we are going to make good on the promise of a resurgence. The auto industry has SEMA, the tech industry has CES. It’s time the U.S. nuclear industry had its top event of the year.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

Twice a year, the ANS president and I work with the general chair of our next national meeting to set the theme of the event.

It’s no easy process. Sure, one can be anodyne, picking anything with “collaborations” or “partnerships” in it—perfectly acceptable but easily forgotten. “Partnerships for Innovation.” Yay! Wait, what?

The true goal is to capture the zeitgeist, the vibe that can frame properly a fulsome conversation around the state of applied nuclear science and technology at this particular moment in time. Yes, our theme is intended largely for the opening plenary, but I’ve often seen speakers use it as a conversational leverage point in the technical and executive sessions that follow.

Kairos Power broke ground yesterday on a Salt Production Facility at the company’s newly dedicated Manufacturing Development Campus during an event at a sprawling site in Mesa del Sol, N.M., just south of Albuquerque. The new facility will produce the FLiBe (a mixture of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride salts) needed to cool the advanced reactors Kairos Power plans to build, starting with its Hermes nonpower demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and could be operational and producing salt in 2026, according to an October 3 Department of Energy news release.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

I recently attended the 2024 Utility Working Conference where, despite the widespread travel disruptions created by Tropical Storm Debby, nearly 600 folks from the U.S. nuclear utility and supplier community had descended on southwest Florida to network, do business, and have a little fun.

The UWC has always been a bit different from other nuclear industry meetings: a little less “happy talk” about the future, a little more “real talk” about the practical challenges facing the industry.

To be sure, the mood on the expo floor was buoyant. Business is good for anyone serving the existing fleet these days. The Inflation Reduction Act’s investment incentives have finally gained traction, which has resulted in utilities taking a more long-term approach to their plant maintenance and uprate projects, which in turn has created bigger opportunities for suppliers.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

Duck, N.C.—A summer beach vacation with the extended family: There’s nothing else quite like it, reliving old memories and developing a greater appreciation for how others felt about them at that moment. One particular topic came up at our multigenerational dinner the other night: “Describe your experience of riding on a two-wheel bike for the first time.”

Among the Gen Z crowd at the table, we heard stories of stitched up chins and falls into prickly bushes. However, despite a few harrowing starts, all are now confident twentysomething cyclists with no residual trauma.

The parents’ recollections of events seemed more sober. After all, there are few parental experiences more fraught than teaching your child to ride a two-wheeled bike. It’s as scary as it is unavoidable.

Marzano

President Biden has selected Matthew Marzano as his choice to fill the open seat on the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The panel of commissioners has had a vacancy since Jeff Baran’s term as commissioner ended in June 2023.

Marzano currently serves as an Idaho National Laboratory detailee for the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, advising EPW on policy matters relating to clean air, climate, and energy. Most recently, he advised the committee’s chairman on the ADVANCE Act, legislation designed to prepare the NRC for an expected surge in new nuclear reactor oversight.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

A good bit of this month’s edition of Nuclear News is devoted to the latest developments in fusion energy.

While 2024 may not have the punchy investment headlines of ’22, I think it’s fair to say that fusion energy technology is making tangible progress beneath the surface, with unannounced stealth funding plans and the continuation of public-private partnerships.

When will it become a productive element of our global energy architecture? No one knows for sure. There are still myriad challenges to be solved in high-temperature ­materials, high–critical temperature superconductors, advanced algorithms, and tritium fuel cycle control, just to name a few. But every day, fusion feels a tiny bit more mature, like somehow it has left its childhood bedroom in physics to move into the dorm room of engineering.

A ceremony in Wyoming yesterday marked the official start of construction of TerraPower’s planned Natrium reactor demonstration project.

While currently awaiting final review from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, TerraPower is moving forward with nonnuclear construction work at a retired coal plant near Kemmerer, Wyo. The groundbreaking brought together TerraPower leaders, government officials, Natrium project partners, industry advocates, and community supporters.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

On August 23, 2011, at 1:51 p.m., I was standing next to Matt Milazzo, a former ANS Congressional Fellow, on the sidewalk of a high-traffic D.C. street. We were saying goodbye after a pleasant lunch. At that exact moment, a seismic wave from a 5.9 magnitude earthquake in Mineral, Va.—one that would be felt as far away as Canada and cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage—rippled under my feet. Perhaps it felt too familiar, like a heavy truck passing by, or maybe the oscillation peaked just as I was turning to walk back to my office. Either way, I didn’t feel a thing. The largest East Coast earthquake in 100 years, and I missed it. Completely. It wasn’t until I saw the stunned faces of my colleagues and a few picture frames scattered on the floor of my office that I understood the gravity of the moment.

Today, as I wrap my head around the stunningly large amount of energy that will be required to support advanced data center and AI functions in the coming years, I get the same feeling—that something big and consequential has happened in my larger world and I have been slow to perceive the magnitude of it.

The U.K.-based Financial Times recently featured an article focusing on the return of retirees and the extending of professional careers in the nuclear industry in Western countries. According to the article, “the nuclear power industry is seeking to lure back thousands of retired engineers and older professionals as Western companies try to fill a skills gap to deliver the biggest wave of new projects in decades.”

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

Another year, another stellar performance by America’s nuclear plants. We’ve come to expect high capacity factors, and it’s a credit to the men and women of the profession. They’ve made routine something that was unimaginable not so long ago.

The decadal challenge for the nuclear enterprise now is to maintain this high level of operational excellence for the current fleet, while at the same time ushering in a new generation of technologies at scale. It will be a big job—but one that seems more and more likely with each passing day.

It is against this hopeful backdrop that I take the opportunity to update you on our latest steps toward making the American Nuclear Society a class-leading professional society.