The theme of the 2021 ANS Virtual Annual Meeting—Breaking Through to Deployment—is a theme of action. It can take substantial momentum, shrewdly applied, to break through barriers.
Dunzik-Gougar
Piercy
The scheduled premature shutdown of Indian Point-3 will all but guarantee a massive increase in fossil fuel use, according to an op-ed written by American Nuclear Society President Mary Lou Dunzik-Gougar and Executive Director/CEO Craig Piercy that was published in the New York Daily News on November 30.
Indian Point-3 is slated to be shut down in April 2021, four years before its operating license expires.
Clockwise from top left are Craig Piercy, Ray Furstenau, Tom O’Connor, Sean McDeavitt, Tara Neider, and Judi Greenwald.
The Versatile Test Reactor’s conceptual design was approved in September, and a draft environmental impact statement could be released within the week. The completion of more project milestones leading to operation in 2026, however, will depend on congressional appropriations. An expert panel described the need for a state-of-the-art test reactor and the value that the VTR could bring to the U.S. nuclear R&D community over its 60-year lifetime during a recent webinar—“Advanced U.S. Nuclear Research and Development: A Briefing and Discussion on the VTR”—hosted by Idaho National Laboratory.
Craig Piercy, ANS executive director/CEO, moderated the webinar, introducing a project update from VTR executive director Kemal Pasamehmetoglu and facilitating a Q&A session with representatives of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy, universities, reactor developers, and the Nuclear Innovation Alliance. A recording of the October 29 webinar is available online. INL also has a video and information online on the VTR.
“I think that the VTR represents part of a larger effort to modernize our infrastructure, develop a new set of technologies, and really preserve our global leadership in the field,” said Piercy. Read on to learn more about the promise the VTR holds for the nuclear community.
Craig Piercy
Originally published in the August 2020 issue of Nuclear News.
Dear reader:
Let’s face it. The U.S. nuclear manufacturing and supply chain is not what it once was. In the 1960s and ’70s, America was the dominant player in the global nuclear industry. Under the auspices of Atoms for Peace, U.S. companies successfully provided reactor systems and associated services to countries across the world and held significant sway over the course of future nuclear development in the international arena. America was at the top of its nuclear game.
Craig Piercy
Originally published in the July 2020 issue of Nuclear News.
Dear reader:
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the new Nuclear News! What you are seeing is truly the product of a team effort, led by our Director of Publications John Fabian and veteran Editor-in-Chief Rick Michal, to fundamentally reimagine the way we bring you news and insights from the wide world of nuclear science and technology. Nuclear News has always been the flagship publication of the American Nuclear Society, but in recent decades our visual format has gotten a little, well . . . long in the tooth.
What does it mean to be a leader? That question is at the heart of the Young Professionals Congress 2019 (YPC19).
Welcome to the New Year! Even though I am on the road, there is just so much happening lately in nuclear I could not pass up the opportunity to talk about it! This episode of RadioNuclear, we take a look at recent and exciting legislation and policy for advanced nuclear. This includes the passages of the NEIMA and NEICA bills and what the Idaho National Laboratory may look like in the coming years. We also discuss the NRC's recent decision on post Fukushima regulation. Lastly, we look on how you can adopt a dog from the Chernobyl exclusion zone. No, I am not making that up!
Two bipartisan pieces of legislation modernizing America's nuclear future have recently become law. It's still a long way from pushing nuclear builds the way we need to address a host of environmental issues, but it is a good start.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013