The accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, has sparked many safety improvements in the nuclear industry over the past decade. Lessons from the accident and its aftermath will influence firms and regulators as they consider the future design, construction, operation and decommissioning of nuclear reactors.

An American Nuclear Society webinar, “Nuclear News Presents: A Look Back at the Fukushima Daiichi Accident,” held yesterday was attended by more than 1,550 viewers and generated about 150 questions to the panelists. The attendance was the largest ever for an ANS webinar.

The panelists were Mike Corradini, emeritus professor, University of Wisconsin; Dale Klein, former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Joy Rempe, principal, Rempe and Assoc. LLC; Lake Barrett, senior advisor, Tokyo Electric Power Company and Japan’s International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID); and Paul Dickman, senior policy fellow, Argonne National Laboratory.

The webinar’s recording and slides are available here, along with an e-version of the March issue of Nuclear News, which features a cover story on the Fukushima Daiichi accident.

An expert panel will look back at the origins of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in an ANS webinar to be held on Monday, February 15, from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. (EST). Register now for the webinar, “The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at 50 Years,” which is free and available to all members.

The ANS Young Members Group is hosting a free webinar, on Thursday, February 11, featuring the Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) as part of its ongoing "Spotlight on National Labs" series. The broadcast runs from noon to 1:30 p.m. (ET) and will cover RSL’s current and future initiatives. Registration is free and open to all.

Details: As part of the Global Security Mission Directorate, RSL is a center for creating and using advanced technologies that provide a broad range of scientific, technological, and operational disciplines with core competencies in emergency response operations and support, remote sensing, and applied science and technologies in support of counterterrorism and radiological and nuclear incident response.

Located at the Nevada National Security Site, RSL is composed of scientists, engineers, technologists, pilots, operations specialists, and administrators, many of whom hold doctorate degrees, providing the lab with a wide diversity of education and experience. Working in sophisticated laboratories with state-of-the-art equipment, these personnel work to advance the technological and operational capabilities of the emergency response teams and other RSL customers and stakeholders.

The sixth and most recent installment in the ANS Young Members Group (YMG) Spotlight on National Labs webinar series explored nuclear science and engineering at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on July 16.

The ANS Young Members Group and the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) on June 18 presented a webinar on the rapidly developing prospects for advanced nuclear in Puerto Rico. Behind those bright prospects is the Nuclear Alternative Project (NAP), which led a Department of Energy–funded study on the feasibility of using small advanced reactors to meet the island’s power needs.

The ANS Young Members Group (YMG) continues to deliver an in-depth look at the Department of Energy’s national laboratories through a series of live webinars called Spotlight on National Labs. The fourth and most recent webinar focused on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), located in Golden, Colo., and its role in advancing clean energy technologies and their integration into the global energy system. “It is exciting to have the lead renewable energy national lab discuss their work toward a flexible grid of the future and system integration efforts among all carbon-free sources, including nuclear energy,” said Harsh Desai, YMG chair.