WM22 Conference Summary
Well, the conference is winding down and I finally have a little time to write up my notes - brief as they are! As in previous years, it was a fantastic event and well organised. It was great to meet people face-to-face again and there was a real buzz and excitement to the event. The UK Pavilion had a great layout with plenty of traffic so a big shout out to Steph at the NIA and all the others who put it together.
Here is a brief rundown of the main highlights for me; unfortunately you can't get to see and hear everything you would like too and planned meetings and chance encounters also eat into the time.
Monday
The conference opened with a plenary session and presentations from Ike White (DOE), David Peattie (UK NDA) and John Vollmer (Amentum). They are all exceptional speakers.
The show floor opened fully for the first day. Here is our booth in the UK Pavilion. The laptops displayed the Idea Catalog and people could interact and see the huge range of technologies included. It was always pleasing to meet with vendors and see their amazement that we not only had their technologies in the database but that it was more than they have on their own website! Please feel free to have a look yourself - it's free to register with the option for a premium plan for more content.
Our freebies consisted of goodie bags containing items related to the Queens Jubilee in keeping with promoting the UK. The pencils, key rings, London buses & taxis and Mr Men on the London Underground books proved popular as takeaways for the kids and grandkids.
There were a number of presentations from the UK contingent today that were interesting in the session called "Application of Innovative D&D Technologies Including Application of Virtual Reality". Chris Hope (Sellafield) kicked off with his talk on "Robots and Lasers for Safer, Faster, Better Value Decommissioning" which was a great talk on decommissioning of alpha gloveboxes. Rebecca Lunn (Strathclyde Uni) then discussed their work on "Sealing of Cracks in Degraded Concrete Nuclear Structures". Frank Allison (FIS360) followed in presenting the Gamechangers program (a fabulous concept and well worth seeking out more information if you're interested). Finally there was a presentation on "Underwater Spectroscopic Techniques for In-situ Nuclear Waste Characterisation" by David Megson-Smith (Bristol Uni).
In the evening the UK hosted the evening reception where they provided Fish and Chips. Okay, it wasn't quite like my local chippy but I think people understood the idea!
Tuesday
This morning I gave a presentation on DOE EM's strategic infrastructure management plan - called the SIMP for short. The presentation gave a high level overview of the work we've been doing with Longenecker & Associates and DOE HQ Team on linking supporting infrastructure to mission need.
As a bit of background, the purpose of the SIMP is to demonstrate the need for investments to ensure EM will meet its mission of safe, cost-effective and timely clean up of its legacy sites.?The strategy is modelled on the successful approaches developed and implemented by NNSA while recognizing the respective missions of NNSA and EM are unique and requires a degree of adaptation to best apply these principles to EM.
The strategic plan contains five themes and I briefly explained the key processes we have developed and rolled out across the complex. Each of these themes are explained in more detail in the Waste Management paper itself
My presentation was in the session titled "Worldwide Perspectives of Radioactive Waste Management - Challenges and Solutions" that also covered presentations from France and the UK. So, Claire Gallery-Strong presented on the newly formed Nuclear Waste Services which is the part of NDA that oversees the group's integrated waste programme and Alan Mowat talked about Dounreay's waste management strategies. Amanda Anderson (DOE) gave an interesting presentation on the work they are doing on monitoring radioactive contamination in the Artic Circle. This was a fascinating insight into a multi-country scientific team (including Russia!) in an area with historic challenges from military accidents and legacy dumping practices.
Tuesday evening is always packed full of events where vendors provide food and drink in the local hotels and bars. Yet another place for networking and bumping into people you haven't already seen.
Wednesday
I was on a panel session called "Tech Transfer & Commercialization: Innovative Solutions for Domestic and International Opportunities". Chaired by Ming Zhu (DOE) and John Mathieson the speakers discussed their take on this topic. Suffice to say that everyone pretty much said the same thing albeit in different ways! The other speakers were Vanessa Chan, Chief Commercialization Officer, US DOE - Office of Technology Transitions, Linda Ashton, PA Consulting, Brady Lee, SRNL and Frank Allison, FIS360 Ltd.
Thursday
There are still plenty of people presenting today but the numbers attending are dropping off significantly which is a shame for the presenters. I am wrapping up here myself with some more meetings planned for today and tomorrow. It was a great conference and I am looking forward to coming back again next year! I believe it is slightly earlier next year (Feb 26 - Mar 2, 2023) but it is best to check closer to the time. Hope to see you there.
Call to Action
Please do have a look at our Idea Catalog. It is packed full of ideas to avoid reinventing the wheel. It is more than just a list in that it provides a significant amount of supporting information on individual technologies from articles, documents and videos. The information is not just material from the vendors marketing department but real-world information from other sources. There is also a sophisticated filtering system to enable you to sort technologies so you can match them to your specific need. It is free to register (you won't be bombarded with emails - guaranteed). There is also a Premium Plan available if you want to access additional content or upload your own contributions.
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