Fight on. We need to have persistence, regardless of market and economic performance, presidential and congressional election outcomes, or the ruffling of our social fabric. We live in an age where constant connectivity, technological speed, and global interconnection allow nearly simultaneous events and reactions. Sociologists call it “temporal compression.” We experience in one week the kind of social, political, and informational turbulence that used to unfold over months or years. The result is temporal overload—that feeling that life is densely packed and exhausting, making the last five years feel like 50.
It’s times like these when we need to filter the distractions and remember why we joined this profession—to build something truly transformational in advancing humanity. Let’s jump in and get back to work.
Maintain our collective accountability. This resurgence is ours to engineer. A lot of people want to help, but no one can do it for us. This extends to safety: In the end, it falls to each of us to do the right thing. We all have a responsibility to each other to apply science and engineering in a rational and risk-informed way and strike the right balance between speed and prudence.
Have confidence. No one knows exactly how the world will look in 2100, and today we are wrestling with an endless list of existential questions. But it’s fruitless to lose ourselves to worry when there are no answers. Our goal is a fixed star: We are building a key pillar of civilization that will enable a better, more abundant future for us and our offspring.
Back when he was an NRC commissioner, Bill Magwood once responded to a question at the RIC [Regulatory Information Conference] about how we make sure future humans don’t accidentally breach a geologic repository. “It depends on the world you want to imagine. Is it Star Trek, or Planet of the Apes?” he began.
That answer stuck with me. I’ve used it often over the years as a way to express the importance and nobility of our efforts. There is no world without nuclear energy that I want to live in, and I think most people, whether they know it or not, feel the same. So, to the people in this community, I say, “Stand tall. If we all do our jobs, we’ve got this.”
This column has been adapted from Piercy’s remarks at the 2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo, held November 8–12 in Washington, D.C.
