Materials

Welcome, Nuclear Archer!

In the past few days, the nuclear industry has a new blogger, Nuclear Archer. He is doing a great job of explaining materials science, right down to the grain boundaries in steel. My favorite quote from his most recent post:

(A) reactor is just a design until the metallurgists say if it can be built or not.

So true! He's being honest about the materials challenges, and serious about the solutions. This blog fills an important gap in the blogosphere, in my opinion. Most nuclear bloggers are systems people. This new blog concentrates on how materials work or fail. Welcome, Nuclear Archer!

Gordon Research Conferences

This may not be totally relevant, but this summer I will attend (again) the Gordon Research Conference on high temperature materials and chemistry. Since I no longer do active research in this field, I am honored to be allowed to attend the conference. I am especially excited about the nuclear sessions.

However, I will not be blogging about the conference. Gordon Research Conferences are meant for working scientists from all over the world. At these conferences, people critique ideas, trade hypotheses, and discuss experimental methodologies. Scientists can speak freely because the discussions and results are not made public. The Gordon Conferences are a ferment of ideas and international cooperation. Later, many published peer-reviewed papers result from ideas hatched at these conferences.

However, the conferences have also been called the Leisure of the Theoried Class. (That was a little joke.)

I won't be blogging in mid-July, but I will be thinking about nuclear power.