PHOENIX – One year after organizers of the Waste Management Symposia experienced a slew of last minute attendee cancellations sparked by federal layoffs the annual gathering here in Downtown Phoenix seemed to enjoy a comeback.
During the Monday keynote session, Fluor executive and Waste Management official Greg Meyer announced this year’s attendance was 2,800. That’s short of the 3,000-plus recorded in prior non-pandemic years, but the hallway vibe was far more upbeat than last year.
The biggest news to come out of the 52nd annual Waste Management Symposia (WMS) was the announcement by the Department of Energy’s Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Tim Walsh that the Office of Environmental Management (EM) was changing its name.
“We will be transforming the mission from nuclear restoration to a nuclear renaissance,” Walsh said. “Soon, we will roll out our new name, Nuclear Restoration and Revitalization … to turn our liabilities into assets.”
While WMS did not announce any name change of its own, its range of nuclear-related sessions seemed to continue to grow wider this year.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is bracing for dozens of new advanced nuclear plant applications, including small modular reactors (SMRs). WMS featured sessions on new nuclear applications as well as the prospects for nuclear fusion.
It also seemed that nearly every session was talking about artificial intelligence and its promise and perils. SMRs and other advanced reactors are being talked about as power generators for the AI data centers on DOE property.
In some instances, speakers referred to AI’s potential to help overcome the loss of human institutional knowledge in the face of retirements and layoffs.