Education

The Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management, which oversees department legacy sites that have been cleaned of radioactive waste and environmental contamination, debuted its first podcast on December 15. Launched in honor of the office’s 20th anniversary, the podcast series includes four episodes, each featuring a different member of the DOE-LM team.

Two teams of guest editors from Idaho National Laboratory have announced plans for special issues of the American Nuclear Society's Nuclear Science and Engineering, the nuclear community’s longest-running technical journal. Abdalla Abou Jaoude and Abderrafi M. Ougouag are leading the NSE issue Technical Challenges and Opportunities in the Development and Deployment of Microreactors, while Joseph Nielsen and Piyush Sabharwall are organizing the NSE issue Irradiation Experiments Supporting Advanced Nuclear Technologies.

Carson Noack is a busy young man with a clear vision of the future of energy. The 23-year-old undergraduate is slated to receive his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Abilene Christian University (ACU) in 2024. He’s also a researcher in the university’s Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing (NEXT) Laboratory, which has been making news with its plans to build the first new research reactor in the United States in more than 30 years—the Molten Salt Research Reactor (MSRR).

Fifty-two percent of Americans either “strongly” or “somewhat” support nuclear energy as part of the United States’ energy mix, with the strongest support among Republicans (59 percent) and self-described independents (53 percent). Support among Democrats is 48 percent. Those are some of the results from the sixth annual American Climate Perspectives Survey conducted by ecoAmerica.

Recently I had the opportunity to be the American Nuclear Society’s boots on the ground when I traveled to San Diego during Nuclear Science Week. I got to meet dozens of members of the nuclear community, tour the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, attend a screening of Oliver Stone’s Nuclear Now, and listen to a lively panel discussion about the importance of nuclear energy for solving climate change. It was a fun and illuminating experience, and I left with the impression that, excitingly, nuclear curiosity is on the rise.

Almost two-thirds of 14- to 18-year-olds in the United Kingdom would consider a career in nuclear if they knew more about it, according to a new report, Nuclear Energy: Young People’s Views on Nuclear Energy and Careers in the Nuclear Sector, from the British Science Association (BSA).

About the report: The report was conducted as part of the BSA’s Future Forum program and was funded by Urenco, an international supplier of uranium enrichment services and fuel cycle products, as part of its commitment to education and skills development.

The report centered around an initial survey of 1,000 14- to 18-year-olds in England, Scotland, and Wales, with two follow-up workshops that were attended by 39 young people, providing the opportunity for more detailed responses.

World Nuclear Energy Day takes place tomorrow, marking the 81st anniversary of the day in 1942 when Enrico Fermi and his team achieved the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction with Chicago Pile-1. It also is the anniversary of the first commercial nuclear reactor reaching criticality—at Shippingport, Pa., on December 2, 1957.

The Philippines generates none of its electricity from nuclear energy. Until recently, it was even without a functioning research and training reactor. The lack of a nuclear facility has led to a dearth of scientific expertise in nuclear science and nuclear engineering in this nation of roughly 117 million people. Twenty-nine-year-old Ronald Daryll E. Gatchalian is on a mission to change that.

As countries increasingly plan to adopt or expand nuclear energy to their energy grids, the importance of national and international nuclear law was underscored in recent remarks by Rafael Mariano Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general.

A new NSTOR collection, "Reimagining Nuclear Futures: Emerging Voices on Technology, Policy, and Society," has been launched by Aditi Verma, assistant professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences at the University of Michigan. The collection features technology policy op-eds, essays, and papers from emerging scholars in nuclear engineering and adjacent fields.

The collection is open access with no publication charges through the end of 2024.

NSTOR—Nuclear Science and Technology Open Research—is offered through the American Nuclear Society.

Anyone involved in the nuclear power industry could tell you that the operation of nuclear power plants is a demanding and never-ending endeavor. Our machines are complex, our challenges are diverse, and our standards are unyielding. The truth is, however, many of us stay in this field because there’s something at the heart of what we do that makes it all worthwhile.

North Carolina’s fiscal year 2024 budget for the state has allocated $3 million for North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, to conduct a study to assess the feasibility for the establishment of an advanced nuclear research reactor.

The next opportunity to earn professional engineer (P.E.) licensure in nuclear engineering is just around the corner: the Principles and Practice of Engineering Examination for nuclear engineering will be administered nationwide on October 24, 2023. If you are preparing to take the exam on this day, best of luck!

For many of us, the toys of our childhood leave indelible marks on our consciousness, affecting our long-term perceptions and attitudes about certain things. Hot Wheels may inspire a lifelong fascination with fast, flashy automobiles, while Barbies might shape ideas about beauty and self-­image. For the generation who grew up during the Atomic Age—the post–World War II era from roughly the mid-1940s to the early 1960s—the toys, games, and entertainment of their childhoods might have included things like atomic pistols, atomic trains, rings with tiny amounts of radioactive elements, and comic books, puzzles, and music about nuclear weapons.

Class was back in session this spring when, after a hiatus, the American Nuclear Society hosted its third session of Nuclear Energy 101 in Washington, D.C., for congressional staffers. This five-course educational series is a wonderful—and popular—tool for ANS to network with congressional staff and explain the basics of nuclear science and technology.

The American Nuclear Society has added two new books to its publication catalog: Robert Busch’s Nuclear Criticality Safety: Evaluations, Calculations, and Experiences and Raymond J. Juzaitis’s Redemption of Prometheus: Creating a Sustainable Nuclear Enterprise for the 21st Century. The titles were released for purchase in late August and early September, respectively.

Abilene Christian University’s Gayle and Max Dillard Science and Engineering Research Center (SERC) has opened. SERC contains the Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing Laboratory (NEXT Lab) and is the future home of one of the first advanced reactors in the United States. More than 300 people were on hand to celebrate the opening and tour the facility, including donors, government officials, and scientists from ACU and other research institutions.

Harris

Abram

Cleo Abram and Johnny Harris are young, independent video journalists—and friends and colleagues—who have been posting educational and supportive videos about nuclear energy on YouTube.

Abram describes her work as “making optimistic tech explainers.” The name of her show is Huge If True, “an antidote to the doom and gloom, helping its audience decode the world around them and see positive futures they can help build.”

The next opportunity to earn professional engineer (P.E.) licensure in nuclear engineering will be this fall when the exam is administered nationwide on October 24, 2023. If you haven't yet done so, you can brush up for the exam by obtaining the various preparation materials made available by the American Nuclear Society.

According to Joshua Vajda, chair of the ANS Professional Engineering Examination Committee (PEEC), it is important for ANS as a scientific society to continue to encourage professional licensure: “Emphasizing the importance of obtaining nuclear credentials is a Society initiative to maintain high ethical standards in the industry and to provide career advancement for the next generation of young practicing nuclear engineers.”

On April 10, the University of Missouri (MU) took its first formal step toward building NextGen MURR when school officials issued the request for qualifications for the project. The RFQ is a solicitation for interested companies to offer the design, engineering, licensing, environmental, and developmental services that are needed for NextGen MURR, planned to be larger and more capable than the school’s existing University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR)—which itself has been the most powerful research reactor and most intense neutron source on any U.S. campus since it began operating in 1966.