ANS News

The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (professional divisions, ANS governance, local sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to that of a professional. With this mission statement in mind, the YMG decided to gamify member engagement to encourage YMG member participation in Society events.

Nominations for the 2023 Annual Meeting awards are now being accepted, through the deadline of March 1. Hash Hashemian, chair of the ANS Honors and Awards Committee, urged members in a letter posted online to nominate their peers: “Your nomination of highly qualified individuals is the key step in recognizing their contributions and ensuring that the ANS Honors and Awards Program is aware of their achievements.” The recipients of the national awards, listed below, will be honored at the 2023 ANS Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, Ind. Honorees will be notified of their selection by May.

By all accounts, 2022 brought many successes for the American Nuclear Society’s Standards Committee, including the initiation of five projects, reaffirmation of 11 current standards, and publication of seven new or revised standards. The entire collection of ANS current standards has been approved or reaffirmed (reapproved without change) by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) within the past five years, keeping ANS in 100 percent compliance with ANSI’s requirement on maintaining current American National Standards. Also, the ANS standards program was reaccredited by ANSI on August 19, 2022, with the approval of a revised set of rules and procedures. ANS’s new rules and procedures take advantage of the opportunity to develop standards-related technical reports that may be registered with ANSI.

The Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2023) is still a few weeks off, but ANS offered a preview during a webinar on January 19. Moderated by Billy Wilson, senior engineer of nuclear training (for eLearning) at Ontario Power Generation, the webinar featured four panelists who discussed their upcoming presentations that will be delivered at CONTE 2023.

In 2022, the American Nuclear Society Board of Directors approached the Diversity and Inclusion in ANS (DIA) committee with the task of revising the ANS Code of Ethics (COE), and at the ANS Winter Meeting this past November, the board gave its approval of the revisions.

This year the American Nuclear Society’s Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS 2023) conference, which will be held May 7–11, 2023, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, is focusing on powering the next era of space exploration through nuclear-enabled technologies and is sure to be the can’t-miss event of the year for those in the aerospace community.

With the 2023 American Nuclear Society national election opening next month, ANS News asked the nominees for vice president/president-­elect and treasurer for statements outlining their goals for ANS. The nominees for vice president/president-­elect are Jeffrey King and Lisa Marshall. King, an ANS member since 2001, is the director of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Center at the Colorado School of Mines; Marshall, an ANS member since 2005, is the director of outreach, retention, and engagement at North Carolina State University. The elected candidates will succeed current ANS vice president/president-­elect Kenneth Peterson following the ANS Annual Meeting in June, when Peterson becomes president.

The American Nuclear Society will host a special preview of its upcoming training and education conference this Thursday, January 19. The hourlong program on the ANS Conference on Nuclear Training and Education (CONTE 2023) starts at 1:00 p.m. eastern time.

Register now: Hear from some of the top experts who will be presenting at CONTE 2023, which takes place February 6–9 in Amelia Island, Fla.

In 2022, the American Nuclear Society Board of Directors approached the Diversity and Inclusion in ANS (DIA) committee with the task of revising the ANS Code of Ethics (COE), and at the ANS Winter Meeting this past November, the board gave its approval of the revisions.

As Seth Grae was preparing to return home from COP27, where he attended as an American Nuclear Society delegate, he had no idea that he was about to be part of a last-minute win for nuclear energy. Grae, the founder and chief executive officer of Lightbridge Corporation (NASDAQ: LTBR), felt that the nuclear industry had exceeded expectations at the two-week conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The first-ever International Atomic Energy Agency pavilion dedicated solely to nuclear energy was buzzing with delegates eager to educate the public. But hours before COP27 was to end, Grae received a text—the message of which would end up reaching the conference negotiation room.

The text came from a delegate, a teenager from Sweden who spotted an issue with the preliminary draft of the final COP27 decision.

Shah

American Nuclear Society executive director/chief executive officer Craig Piercy interviewed Jigar Shah, the director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), in an ANS members-only online event on December 7. Shah and Piercy discussed the LPO’s role in assisting the U.S. nuclear energy industry both domestically and internationally in working toward the decarbonization of the power sector. The interview served as a follow-up to Shah’s article in Nuclear News, “Deploy, deploy, deploy: Achieving our climate goals requires nuclear this decade” (November 2022, p. 12).

Shah’s expertise: Before becoming LPO director in early 2021, Shah was president of Generate Capital, which he cofounded as an investment and operating platform for sustainable infrastructure, including distributed energy storage, microgrids, fuel cells, electric vehicles, and organic waste management. He also founded SunEdison, which pioneered “pay as you save” financing for solar energy. In addition, he was the founding CEO of the Carbon War Room, a nonprofit organization that helps entrepreneurs address climate change.

The Department of Energy yesterday awarded the American Nuclear Society and Energy Communities Alliance Inc. (ECA) a combined $800,000 to connect with communities across the country and establish education and outreach opportunities in nuclear energy. (A Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit, ECA “brings together local government officials to share information, establish policy positions, and promote community interests to address an increasingly complex set of constituent, environmental, regulatory, and economic development needs,” according to its website.)

ANS will host a members-only event on December 7 from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. EST with Jigar Shah, director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO). Craig Piercy, ANS executive director and chief executive officer, will lead the interview.

Register now: Hear about the ambitious goals of the Biden administration to decarbonize the power sector by 2035, which were highlighted in Shah’s article in the November issue of Nuclear News. Shah will also discuss how nuclear can be an important part of the decarbonized energy mix in the United States and how he believes the LPO can support the administration’s target.

At this year’s Winter Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, American Nuclear Society President Steven Arndt honored four ANS members with Presidential Citations. The president of ANS has the privilege of presenting presidential citations to individuals who, in their opinion, have demonstrated outstanding effort in some manner for the benefit of ANS and/or the nuclear community.

The awards are “highlighted throughout our community as a personal outreach to our recipients to say, ‘well done,’” said Arndt.

Nuclear power plant cooling towers are easily recognizable for their familiar hyperboloid shape. But an art exhibit running at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago aims to give visitors a different perspective.

The Art of the Reactor, an exhibit by the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History and hosted by IIT’s Lewis College of Science and Letters, opened on November 4 and runs until Sunday, December 4 at Hermann Hall on the IIT campus.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

There are worse places to be than Vienna, Austria, in the early fall. The place has an old-world vibe for sure. The U-Bahn doesn’t have turnstiles; it runs on the honor system. People take care to dress up before they amble down the Kärntner Strasse, the city’s main shopping district.

Every September, a little further north, 3,000 delegates from around the world, along with 200 representatives from nongovernmental organizations, descend on the Vienna International Center of the United Nations—the VIC, for short—for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s General Conference. Attendees ply its curving hallways and attend side events, engage in meetings on the margins, and tour the national booth displays.

Inside the large, purpose-built plenary hall, a seemingly endless procession of national speakers, each allotted seven minutes (with flashing red digits to let all know who’s run over time), tout their nation’s achievements in nuclear technology and express its views on nuclear matters of any sort. As an accredited NGO, ANS has a desk in the plenary complete with microphone and wireless translation headset. An IAEA plenary is a highly scripted affair—one that looks boring at first glance, but once you put the headphones on and get acclimated to the vagaries of real-time translation, a coherent and interesting picture starts to emerge.

Ogg

Daniel Ogg, ANS member since 1985, has been selected as the executive director of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.

Earlier in his career, he worked at the U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and served in the U.S. Navy aboard a nuclear-powered submarine.

Ogg has a B.S. in engineering from the University of Washington and an M.S. in nuclear engineering from the University of California—Berkeley.

About the NWTRB: The mission of the NWTRB is to perform unbiased and ongoing technical and scientific peer review of the Department of Energy’s nuclear waste management activities.

Stanke

Being Miss Wisconsin has provided me with some unique experiences. I’ve met with community members from recognizable Wisconsin cities like Madison and Milwaukee, but I’ve also met individuals from smaller communities that might not be familiar to most readers—like Kendall, and Nekoosa. This connection with places and people across the state is expected in my role. It didn’t surprise me, and it is one of my favorite aspects of this position.

Through my partnership with the American Nuclear Society, I have had the opportunity to see some incredible facilities in Wisconsin. I first saw two fusion research labs, and created a two-part video on fusion that can be seen on the Miss Wisconsin 2022 and ANS Instagram accounts. It has sparked several conversations at my various appearances—including at those small towns. Hearing people talk about nuclear science and the potential it holds truly fills my soul.

Pate

Zack T. Pate, the former chief executive officer of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) and chair of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), passed away recently at the age of 86. Pate will be remembered for his many important contributions to the global nuclear energy industry, especially regarding nuclear plant performance and safety, as well as his lengthy service in the U.S. Navy. He was a longtime member of the American Nuclear Society.

Navy: Pate was originally from Leesburg, Ga. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1958 and continued to serve with distinction in the navy for 22 years, working on several nuclear submarines and reaching the rank of captain. He was executive officer of the USS Thomas Jefferson and commander of the USS Sunfish.