Meetings

COP29 was good for nuclear energy, but not so good for anything else.

That was one of Seth Grae’s takeaways from this year’s Conference of the Parties—or, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—held for two weeks in November in Baku, Azerbaijan. Grae, chief executive of Lightbridge Corporation and chair of the American Nuclear Society’s International Council, attended with four other ANS delegates: ANS President Lisa Marshall, Gale Hauck, Shirly Rodriguez, and Andrew Smith.

The annual day of celebrating nuclear energy is right around the corner. On December 2, World Nuclear Energy Day will be recognized internationally through workshops, panel discussions, dinner meetings, and special performances focused on educational outreach, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems with nuclear energy.

One of the few constants at American Nuclear Society national meetings is the recognition of exceptional individuals in the nuclear community. ANS President Lisa Marshall has named this season’s award recipients, who received recognition at this week's Winter Conference and Expo in Orlando, Fla.

ANS also announced the winners of awards presented by the Society’s professional divisions. These awards have been mailed to the recipients, and the divisions have recognized or will recognize honorees at various division functions and meetings this fall. The 19 professional divisions of ANS are constituent units and represent a vast array of nuclear science and technology disciplines.

As COP29 kicked off November 11, industry advocates worldwide are hoping to draw attention and increase buy-in to the need for more nuclear capacity.

American Nuclear Society member Jeff Terry hosted this year’s Nuclear Science Week meeting at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech) on October 26. In his opening remarks, Terry, a physics professor at Illinois Tech, described the institute’s 12-year history of Nuclear Science Week events, going back to the 2012 meeting that included the Nuclear Clean Energy Indy car on display.

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.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will host a “comment-gathering meeting” for stakeholders involved with the agency’s University Nuclear Leadership Program (UNLP) so that NRC staff can understand their views and concerns.

A hybrid public meeting hosted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on October 30 will feature chair Christopher Hanson and commissioners David Wright, Annie Caputo, and Bradley Crowell.

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.

Between reactor restarts, a hoped-for tripling of nuclear energy by 2050, and advances in permanent solutions for radioactive waste disposal, the time is ripe for a close yet holistic look at the state of the nuclear industry. The present is informed by both future hopes and the inherited past—that is a key point in the upcoming workshop “Nuclear Revival and Legacies: Insights from Humanities and Social Science,” to be held October 21–22 in Champs-sur-Marne on the outskirts of Paris, France.

World leaders outlined an ambitious push and targeted plans for increasing nuclear energy capacity at the Roadmaps to New Nuclear conference, held September 19–20 in Paris, France.

A mix of nuclear professionals and advocates gathered las week to discuss public policy, workforce needs, and regulatory matters at a meeting of the North Carolina Nuclear Energy Industry Advisory Council.

The American Nuclear Society and the Nuclear Energy Institute have announced a new partnership regarding two of their flagship industry conferences.

ANS’s annual Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo and NEI’s Nuclear Energy Assembly will merge during the week of September 8, 2025, in Atlanta, Ga. The news was shared during the kickoff of the 2024 NEA meeting, happening this week in Philadelphia, Pa.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will discuss the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant safety performance last year in a public meeting this Thursday, August 29.

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which provides safety oversight of Department of Energy sites, is holding a public hearing on August 14 on benchmarking of best practices in the management of aging infrastructure.

According to the DNFSB, the goal of the hearing is to gather information from relevant organizations on best practices in infrastructure aging management to inform the development of potential safety improvements to DOE programs.

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) announced it will hold a public meeting on August 29 to review information on the Department of Energy’s management and plans for disposing of its spent nuclear fuel. The hybrid (in-person/virtual) meeting will begin at 8:00 a.m. EDT and is scheduled to adjourn at approximately 5:00 p.m. EDT.

With increasing demand for clean, reliable, and safe sources of energy, the conversation around nuclear energy is changing. And so too is the conversation around nuclear waste, even as the country struggles to find a path for the disposal of its spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. From community engagement, to recycling, to existing success around other forms of nuclear waste management, the conversation around nuclear waste has many different angles, and an executive session of the American Nuclear Society’s 2024 Annual Conference in Las Vegas aimed to delve into some of those discussions.

Industry leaders met this week to discuss the importance of shoring up nontraditional workforce pipelines to support growth in nuclear energy generation in the coming decades.

An executive panel discussed this issue last week at the American Nuclear Society’s 2024 Annual Conference in Las Vegas The industry is working to target community colleges, trade schools, vocational programs, nontraditional students, and a wider variety of educational backgrounds.

“What can the atom do for you, other than produce electricity from nuclear reactors?” That was the question asked and answered during an ANS Annual Conference special plenary session on June 18, introduced by ANS President Ken Petersen and organized by the ANS Young Members Group. An expert panel discussed radioisotopes and their supply chains in the context of cancer treatment, product sterilization, power for remote applications, and used nuclear fuel recycling.

The technical session “HALEU and Nonproliferation” on Tuesday at the American Nuclear Society Annual Conference focused on why increased nuclear fuel enrichment comes with increased responsibility. Reactor designers are pursuing high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel for their advanced designs, and technical and policy questions surrounding nuclear nonproliferation will need to be addressed if the United States is to become a HALEU supplier.