July 31, 2025, 12:06PMANS NewsGeoffrey Rothwell Left: noted economist Milton Friedman (left) presented the “best graduate
student paper” prize from the Western Economics Association to Rothwell in 1984. Right: Rothwell in 2018, the year of his retirement.
When I was 10, in October 1963, my family moved to Richland, Wash., so that my father could work for Vitro-Hanford Engineering Services, later for Bechtel, on the design of the Fast Flux Test Facility. I was a “new” kid throughout my excellent education in the Richland School District. It was the mid-1960s, and I wanted to be a rocket scientist or aerospace engineer. I took all the math and science that Richland High School (RHS) had to offer. What struck me during our tour of Hanford’s N-reactor with my physics class was the loudness of the steam turbine room compared to the hydro turbine rooms in the dams along the Columbia River. I am now establishing a residence on Columbia Point Drive in Richland.
Honoring the achievements and legacy of the WWII generation of nuclear pioneers — and remembering all those affected by Trinity.

By Craig H. Piercy, CEO and Executive Director of the American Nuclear Society
Eighty years ago today, at exactly 5:29:45 a.m. local time* on July 16, 1945, the United States Army detonated the world’s first nuclear bomb in the Jornada del Muerto desert of southern New Mexico. The searing flash and thunderous shockwave marked the culmination of the Manhattan Project, a secret, three-year national effort to harness nuclear fission and hasten the end of the Second World War.
The Trinity Test, overseen by Manhattan Project director Major General Leslie Groves and Los Alamos Laboratory director Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, was the final act of that race to build the atomic bomb. Hoisted atop a 100-foot steel tower, the plutonium implosion device, known as the Gadget, unleashed a blast equal to 21,000 tons of TNT and temperatures hotter than the center of the sun.
From ten miles away, observers wearing darkened welder goggles looked on in stunned silence. “We knew the world would not be the same,” recalled Oppenheimer.
From left, Igor Bolotnov, Amir Bahadori, Gale Hauck, and Christopher Perfetti at the Mentorship Matters panel during the ANS 2025 Annual Conference. (Photo: ANS)
Applications are officially open for the second cohort of the American Nuclear Society’s newly redesigned mentoring program. Mentor Match is a unique opportunity available only to ANS members that offers year-round mentorship and networking opportunities to Society members at any point in their education.
The deadline to apply for membership in the fall cohort, which will take place October 1–November 30, is September 17. The application form can be found here.
ANS immediate past president Lisa Marshall (blue sweater) tests the radioactivity of various materials at this year’s Radfest with Rex Reidel and Lillian Merrill, two chairs of the ANS Accelerators. (Photo: ANS)
The day before the 2025 ANS Annual Conference officially began in Chicago, the air was abuzz with the crackle of Geiger counters at Argonne National Laboratory in neighboring Lemont, Ill., where about 100 visitors from across the country attended an outreach and education event hosted by the American Nuclear Society.
Olivia Belian and Joseph Holles hold the official chapter certificate awarded to the group last semester. (Photo: NMSU)
The newest student section of the American Nuclear Society has been launched at New Mexico State University. Formally approved and celebrated at the 2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo, this newest community is the 59th active ANS student section, not including two sections currently in the process of revitalization.