Hall Talk at ANS Winter Meeting - Sunday

Don't forget the Twitter hash tag for the conference is #ans11. Post something to Twitter with it and it could wind up here!

India section draws attention from nuclear luminaries

Cory McDaniel, head of the ANS India Section, notes that a recent meeting in Mumbai, attended by ANS President Eric Loewen, drew four of India's leading nuclear figures including Anil Kakokadar, former head of India's Atomic Energy Commission. Dr. S. Banerjee, the current head of the same agency, R.K. Sinha, director of a major nuclear R&D laboratory and VP of the ANS India Society, and S.K. Jain, chairman of NPCIL.

We'll have more information about that meeting in a video interview on the ANS YouTube channel soon.

Focus on Communication on Monday, Wednesday

Mimi Limbach of Potomac Communications reminds readers that there are three sessions on communications with the public, two are on Monday and one on Wednesday.

• Meet the Media, on Monday, Oct. 31, at 2:30 p.m., will feature New York Times reporter Matt Wald, whose work leads media coverage of nuclear energy; Platts' editorial director of energy policy and host of Platt's Energy Week, Bill Loveless, who supervises Platts' Washington office and edits Inside Energy; and The Energy Daily's Jeff Beattie, who covers the commercial energy industry for this important publication. They'll each have a few things to say about journalism and then they'll take your questions. It's in the Forum Room.
• Communicating with Policy Makers, on Monday, Oct. 31, at 4 p.m., has a terrific panel: Matt Bennett, senior vice president and founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank that supports nuclear energy; Annie Caputo, who is on the professional staff of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and who is well known for her work with the commercial nuclear energy industry; Jon Epstein, who is senior counsel to the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where he oversees the DOE and research issues for the committee; Dale Klein, former NRC chairman, assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs, and vice chancellor for special engineering programs at the University of Texas; and Mike Corradini, University of Wisconsin professor of Nuclear Engineering and ANS vice president and president elect. Mike and Dale will be leading a discussion on the ANS's special task force on Fukushima. Each of the panelists will share their insights and then they'll take your questions. This session also is in the Forum Room.
• Focus on Communications: Building Support for Nuclear Energy with Policy Makers, on Wednesday, Nov. 2, at 4:30 p.m. will feature beer, wine, and snacks, courtesy of Areva. In this session, ANS Washington rep Craig Piercy and I will discuss the politics of nuclear energy and their implications for how best to communicate with policy makers. We'll also hold an open forum on actions that ANS should take going forward. This session is in the Hampton Ballroom. It is being held in conjunction with the  Young Professional Congress.

Idaho on an iPad

The Idaho National Laboratory has a new mobile application that displays information about lab programs and capabilities on smart phones and mobile devices. Think of it as the Idaho lab on an iPad or iPhone or any mobile device that can read a QR code.

Point your smartphone camera at this QR code to access the application.

Point your device at:  nuclearapp.inl.gov and lock on to the QR code there for free access.  No registration is required to get a stunning visual tour and catalog of capabilities of what's going on at the DOE lab. The site can also be seen on a laptop or desktop using the Google Chrome web browser.

That's it for tonight. More Monday.

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Yurman

Dan Yurman publishes Idaho Samizdat, a blog about nuclear energy and is a frequent contributor to ANS Nuclear Cafe.