Volume 4, Number 1
April 2006

Inside Insight

By Nancy Jo Nicholas INMM Vice President E-mail: njnicholas@lanl.gov

Greetings fellow INMM members! One of my duties as vice president is to write this column to provide members with insight on the activities of the INMM leadership, and as usual, we’ve been busy!

On March 7, 2006, the Technical Program Committee for the INMM Annual Meeting met in Seattle. Charles Pietri, chair of the INMM Technical Program Committee, worked closely with the institute’s six technical divisions to organize an outstanding technical program that will appeal to nuclear materials management professionals interested in nonproliferation and arms control, international safeguards, materials control and accountability, physical protection, packaging and transportation, as well as nuclear waste management.

The technical program at this year’s INMM Annual Meeting will consist of more than 400 papers presented during 51 concurrent technical sessions.

We’re expecting many students at this year’s meeting, and Mark Leek and the INMM Student Activities Committee are working had to make this meeting valuable for them. Contact Mark Leek (mailto: mark.leek@pnl.gov) if you’re interested in mentoring a student at the annual meeting.

President Cathy Key convened an INMM Executive Committee Meeting, also held in Seattle, on March 8-9. One of the many topics we discussed was responding to the challenge Charles Curtis, president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, presented to the institute during his opening plenary talk at the 2005 INMM annual meeting.

Key tasked the INMM Fellows to explore options for addressing this challenge. John Matter and the Fellows will be sharing some thoughts with us during the INMM business meeting at this summer’s annual meeting.

As an outcome of the recent strategic planning effort to better prepare the institute for the 21 st century, we held a pilot INMM Leadership OrientationWorkshop in Orlando before the 2004 INMM Annual Meeting. The course was aimed at current technical division and committee chairs, chapter officers and current and incoming members-at-large to better prepare these potential future INMM officers.

This summer we plan to hold another leadership orientation course on the Friday afternoon before the INMM Annual Meeting. If you’re interested in attending, contact me or Cathy Key.

We’re excited about some opportunities this coming fall for INMM to collaborate with other organizations on several large meetings. We have been invited by the IAEA to cooperate with them in planning their October 2006 International Safeguards Symposium in Vienna.

Similarly, the American Nuclear Society has invited INMM to collaborate with them in planning their November 2006 meeting, which will be held in Albuquerque, N.M. The topic for this ANS meeting will be Securing the Future in Times of Change, and ANS would like INMM to help develop four half-day sessions on nuclear nonproliferation and proliferation resistance in light of the expanding global nuclear fuel cycle.

In addition, we will also be helping our Japan Chapter celebrate its 30 th anniversary this fall!

I’m looking forward to seeing you at the INMM Annual Meeting in Nashville July 16-20!