Tyler Folse, a nuclear engineer with more than 10 years of experience, is bringing his unique spin and sense of humor to the masses as he debunks common nuclear misconceptions online.

In February, the Community of Practice (CoP) webinar series, hosted by the American Nuclear Society Standards Board’s Risk-informed, Performance-based Principles and Policies Committee (RP3C), celebrated its fifth anniversary. Like so many online events, these CoPs brought people together at a time when interacting with others became challenging in early 2020. Since the kickoff CoP, which highlighted the impact that systems engineering has on the design of NuScale’s small modular reactor, the last Friday of most months has featured a new speaker leading a discussion on the use of risk-informed, performance-based (RIPB) thinking in the nuclear industry. Providing a venue to convene for people within ANS and those who found their way online by another route, CoPs are an opportunity for the community to receive answers to their burning questions about the subject at hand. With 50–100 active online participants most months, the conversation is always lively, and knowledge flows freely.

Each month on the last Friday from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (ET), the American Nuclear Society’s Risk-informed, Performance-based Principles and Policy Committee (RP3C) holds a Community of Practice (CoP), which is open to all. On February 23, N. Prasad Kadambi, director of his eponymous engineering consultancy firm, presented “Technology-Inclusive Implications of ANSI/ANS-30.3-2022, Light Water Reactor Risk-Informed, Performance-Based Design.”

Harris

Abram

Cleo Abram and Johnny Harris are young, independent video journalists—and friends and colleagues—who have been posting educational and supportive videos about nuclear energy on YouTube.

Abram describes her work as “making optimistic tech explainers.” The name of her show is Huge If True, “an antidote to the doom and gloom, helping its audience decode the world around them and see positive futures they can help build.”

Hart

A recent podcast style conversation on YouTube spotlights the journey of J’Tia Hart, an ANS member with an uncommon and inspiring story. The video is part of the Argonne Voices series, an oral history project recording the stories of the people behind the science at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. This year is Argonne’s 75th anniversary.

Background: Hart, who recently moved from Argonne to the DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory, is a nuclear engineer and was the program initiator for Argonne’s Women in Science and Technology–also known as WIST–one of the lab’s employee resource groups.

Hart’s friend Amanda Joyce interviewed Hart in the YouTube post. Joyce is a cybersecurity expert who runs the DOE’s annual CyberForce Competition.

Climate activists rarely mention nuclear power as a tool in the battle against climate change, consumer reporter John Stossel comments during the video "The Nuclear Option" on his YouTube channel.

The German animation studio Kurzgesagt released a new video to its English YouTube channel last week to answer the question, “Do we need nuclear energy to stop climate change?” The studio’s channel on YouTube is self-described as a small team working to make science look beautiful. Its videos discuss a variety of scientific, technological, philosophical, and psychological questions, and it has more than 14 million subscribers. The channel recently discussed the question of deaths caused by radiation—spoiler alert, nuclear is among the safest of all energy production.

There’s a new mythbuster out in the Idaho desert by the name of Don Miley, separating nuclear fact from fiction in the service of science and the Idaho National Laboratory. An article released by INL’s Communications and Outreach staff on August 3—“Nuclear MythBusting: Using Social Media to Set the Record Straight”—explains what you need to know about INL’s new public outreach venture on YouTube. And Miley, a longtime INL tour guide, tells what everyone should know about nuclear technologies in these short videos. Just head to INL’s YouTube channel.