Are you witty? Good with words? Up for a challenge? Then we have a contest right up your alley!

Dr. J'Tia Taylor is a nuclear engineer at Argonne National Laboratory-and on the cast for the newest season of Survivor, which premiered on February 26 at 8/7c on CBS. J'Tia received her Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was the first black female to successfully defend and receive a Ph.D. from the department. She now works at Argonne in the area of nuclear nonproliferation policy-learn more about J'Tia's work at Argonne here.

The American Nuclear Society, through its Professional Development Committee, will offer a full-day workshop "Preparing for the Nuclear Engineering Professional Engineering Exam" on Sunday, June 15, at the ANS Annual Meeting in Reno, Nevada. See Meeting Registration Form for registration information.

The American Nuclear Society will welcome delegates from around the world to Chicago this August for the 8th International Conference on Isotopes (8ICI). It will be the first time that this prestigious conference is hosted in the United States.

On Saturday, January 25, 2014, members of the American Nuclear Society's Chicago Section organized and participated in "Atomic Fission Fun," an event for Girl Scouts to learn about nuclear science. Sixty middle school students from the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana traveled to the Illinois Institute of Technology campus in Wheaton, Ill., to participate.

The commercial nuclear power industry has a remarkable safety record despite lingering images from the accidents at Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daiichi. This record is the legacy of a community of nuclear power plant designers, operators, and regulators who, though imperfect, were committed to the safety of the commercial nuclear power enterprise.

Interview by Katy Huff

[Richard Rhodes, historian and author of numerous books including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb, was the keynote speaker at a special dinner held in observance of the 75th anniversary of the discovery of nuclear fission at the American Nuclear Society 2013 Winter Meeting.  Many ANS members and others, both in attendance and unable to attend, have expressed a desire to see in print his remarkable presentation on the fundamental technological revolutions and advances of the past century, especially the monumental discovery and application of nuclear technology.  The speech is printed in its entirety in the January edition of Nuclear News, and below.]

Editor's note: December 11 marked the 59th anniversary of the founding of the American Nuclear Society. After posting a note on ANS Facebook with an image of the ANS 1st annual meeting program cover, the thought struck... "Well, perhaps some readers would be interested in perusing the 1954 meeting program itself." So, presenting the ANS 1st annual meeting technical program-along with accompanying introductory letter at bottom of post.  Click images or here to access (enlargeable!) program .pdf

Like many young and restless Ph.D. recipients, Tim Lucas was stricken with insatiable wanderlust. After completing his Doctorate in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tim cast off the shackles of his societal commitments to begin a new life as a roving vagabond. Tim, who lived on his beloved boat Slick throughout grad school, set sail from Boston two years ago. He first headed south to the Caribbean, then through the Panama Canal to the Galapagos. He drifted among the South Pacific archipelagos, embracing all the pleasures of peripatetic life. Eventually, he finagled his way across Asia and into the Mediterranean, where he now meanders through the Dodecanese.

The following remarks were presented at the 2013 Young Professionals Congress, held in conjunction with the ANS Annual Winter Meeting on November 9. Participants recommended the text be made more widely available.

Previous articles in this series were published on November 8 and November 14; this is the third and final installment of the series, which concludes just prior to the 60th anniversary of President Eisenhower's famous "Atoms for Peace" speech.  That speech, whose official title was "Atomic Power for Peace," was delivered to the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 8, 1953 and its ramifications for the future of civil nuclear energy the world over were immense.

By Rita Patel and Suzy Baker  [originally published at Nuclear Undone]

NS Savannah

An odd sidelight of my years in the Navy as a Reactor Operator was the time that we were called upon to perform work on the preserved ships at Patriot's Point Naval Museum in Charleston, South Carolina.  This interlude allowed me to become intimately familiar with a ship that was totally out of place at that anchorage of the aged: the nuclear powered commercial ship N.S. Savannah.

Lenka Kollar

Readers of the ANS Nuclear Cafe blog will have seen, from time to time, the work of Lenka Kollar, educating and informing about a wide variety of nuclear issues.  Kollar, formerly of Argonne National Laboratory, has made the bold decision to make her own way as a nuclear advocate and consultant. We had a chance to catch up with Ms. Kollar during the 2013 American Nuclear Society Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C. and ask her a few questions about her just-launched and exciting new initiative Nuclear Undone.

Small Modular Reactors are below 300 MWe output and typically have all components located within the reactor vessel or attached directly to it, as with the South Korean SMART SMR design here

2nd American Nuclear Society SMR Conference

Moniz on Nuclear

The ANS President's Reception at the 2013 Winter Meeting on Sunday, November 10 was a chance for old friends to reunite and new friends to meet with their colleagues and ANS elected leaders.

NS Savannah

Next week, the American Nuclear Society (ANS) will be hosting a Technical Tour of the only nuclear powered commercial vessel ever built in the United States: the NS Savannah.  Will Davis and Paul Bowersox will report from the tour in word and photos.