Natalie Cannon (center) with fellow LANNS researcher Alex England (left) and Prof. Anna Erickson (right) work with the Clinical Linear Accelerator at Georgia Tech. (Photo: Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Tech)
Some people are born leaders, and some people make themselves leaders. Take Natalie Cannon, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has been driven to succeed since she was a teenager in Southern California, when she was inspired by NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.
William Magwood (center, yellow tie) and the visitors from Japan. (Photo: OECD NEA)
As part of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s engagement with the next generation of nuclear energy scholarship, Director General William Magwood IV and Deputy Director General Nobuhiro Muroya hosted students earlier this year from Tokyo Metropolitan Toyama High School.
A reactor operator retrieves a sample can from the MURR, as seen from above. (Photo: University of Missouri)
The University of Missouri announced today that it has signed a $10 million contract for the initial design phase of the $1 billion-plus state-of-the-art NextGen MURR research reactor project.
Concept art of NANO Nuclear’s KRONOS MMR research reactor that UIUC plans to operate on its campus in Champaign, Ill. (Image: NANO Nuclear)
Plans to bring a university research reactor like no other to the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) were punctuated last fall by the news that Ultra Safe Nuclear, the developer of the gas-cooled reactor technology selected for the Illinois Microreactor Project, had declared bankruptcy.
Detailed view of the Lego CROCUS reactor (as seen with Lego Studio software), with the vessel open to reveal the core structure. (Image: Vincent Lamirand)
For many of us, the height of our accomplishments with Lego blocks might have been constructing little square houses as children. For others, these versatile building blocks are a medium for creating complex models of sophisticated machinery—models that have practical and educational applications. One such individual is ANS member Vincent Lamirand, a reactor physicist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Laboratory for Reactor Physics and Systems Behavior (LRS) in Switzerland.
Participants take part in the Centre for Leadership Performance’s Dream Placement program. (Photo: Nuclear Waste Services)
Nuclear Waste Services recently hosted a group of five teenagers for a week of exposure to real-world nuclear industry work environments at its facilities in Calderbridge, Cumbria, in northwestern England. The youth learned about career opportunities and leadership responsibilities at the company. They engaged with senior management and performed activities with several different NWS teams, including the environmental, waste characterization, cybersecurity, geological disposal facility grants, and human resources departments.
NuScale E2 Center work stations at RPI ready for student use. (Photo: RPI)
The opening of an Energy Exploration (E2) Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., was announced by NuScale Power Corporation on March 24. The training center will provide students from RPI’s School of Engineering an opportunity to gain a firsthand understanding of advanced nuclear technology and the role it will play in the global energy transition, as well as of the features and functionality of NuScale’s small modular reactor technology.
Learn more about NuScale E2 Centers here.
Students from South Carolina State University and Claflin University listen to Tristan Downey about the legacy control panels found in the Savannah River Site's L Area. (Photo: DOE)
A group of students recently visited the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, near Aiken, S.C., to get a close look at L Area, a facility the DOE considers critical to nuclear materials management and nonproliferation missions at the site.
Students use materials bought with funds from the IEC’s Full STEAM Ahead in the Classroom grants to make robots. (Photo: DOE)
The Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC) has provided funding to 15 classrooms in southeastern Idaho to support local educators and encourage the next generation of workers to pursue technical careers, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced. The IEC, which is led by Amentum and includes North Wind Portage as a partner, was awarded a 10-year, $6.4 billion contract in 2021 to manage cleanup operation at the Idaho National Laboratory Site.
Abdussami poses with UMich NERS professor Aditi Verma at the ANS Winter Conference in 2023. (Photo: Muhammad Rafiul Abdussami)
Muhammad Rafiul Abdussami is hoping to “shape a brighter future” through innovative approaches to nuclear engineering. The young native of Bangladesh, who is known to friends and colleagues as Rafiul, is a doctoral student in his third year in the University of Michigan’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences (UMich NERS). He expects to graduate in December 2026. He is also enrolled in the Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) graduate certificate program in the UMich Ford School of Public Policy.
