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2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Advanced Reactor Safety (ARS) SPeaker
Dr. Lester Towell is the Director of Operations at ACU’s NEXT Lab.
Dr. Towell earned his bachelor’s degree in Engineering Physics from Abilene Christian University in 1990. For the next four years, he served in the US Navy as an instructor at the Naval Nuclear Power School in Orlando, FL where he taught Reactor Principles and Physics. In 1995, Dr. Towell joined the Computer Information Systems department at Howard Payne University and moved to the Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing (NEXT) Lab at ACU in 2020 as the licensing manager for the first university advanced reactor in the country.
Currently, Dr. Towell serves as the Director of Operations for the NEXT Lab at ACU which is designing the world’s first molten salt research reactor. The mission of the ACU NEXT Lab is to provide global solutions to the world’s critical need for energy, water, and medical isotopes by advancing the technology of molten salt reactors while educating future leaders in nuclear science and engineering.
Last modified April 3, 2024, 6:44am PDT
