In this issue we welcome new NAE Chair Donald C. Winter, former president and CEO of TRW Systems and secretary of the Navy in the Obama administration. He and President John Anderson, whose column ­President’s Perspective has appeared in previous issues, will share this space, alternating ...

This is my first opportunity to address the readership of The Bridge, one that comes as I start my term as chair of the NAE. I have been blessed with a full and diverse career as an engineer. Now in my failed retirement, I find that I have one more opportunity to follow Gordon England (we were the ...

Many were appalled to observe the Central Park incident where a woman used the ethnicity of a peaceful bird watcher and a 911 call in a failed effort to ­subjugate him based on his color. However, this incident was actually a service to the nation because it unveiled just how pervasive racism ...

This issue of The Bridge comes at a pivotal moment of transformation of the global energy system. The desire to reduce the carbon intensity of human activities and strengthen the resilience of infrastructure key to economic prosperity and geopolitical stability shines a new spotlight on the value ...

Humankind faces significant challenges in energy, the environment, and security. Efforts to leave future generations a world that is safer, cleaner, and more prosperous must determine now how to provide energy while reducing contributions to and mitigating the effects of climate change.

Climate ...

Sustaining the value of the US nuclear power fleet can be achieved through cost-effective, reliable operation to deliver diversity, robustness, environmental benefits, and national leadership. Many owners plan to operate nuclear plants for 60 years and more to capture this value. Doing so requires ...

Deep decarbonization of economies will require thoroughgoing changes to all parts of the energy system, including replacing a large share of fossil fuel consumption with low-carbon sources. What will be nuclear’s place in this transformation?

Options for Decarbonized Energy

Nuclear power is ...

Fossil fuels are hard to beat: low cost, easy to store, and easy to transport. They enable the economic provision of variable electricity and heat to the customer because the capital cost of power plants, furnaces, and boilers is small relative to the cost of the fuel. It is economic to operate ...

To make a meaningful contribution toward clean, reliable, and ­economical future energy systems, nuclear power plants (NPPs) must be cost and risk competitive with other low-carbon technologies within near-term timeframes. Recent new builds in the United States and western Europe have suffered ...

The costs of first-of-a-kind small modular nuclear power reactors (SMRs) and microreactors (<10 MWe capacity) are expected to be high when compared with those of historical large-scale light water reactors (LWRs). ...

Over the past two decades, significant efforts have been devoted to creating a new paradigm for the fabrication and deployment of nuclear power plants. These efforts include development of a variety of reactor designs aimed at increasing efficiency, flexibility, and safety.

From the standpoint of ...

All commercial nuclear power plants operating in the United States are light water reactors (LWRs), in which the coolant and the moderator are ordinary water. Many vendors seek to commercialize different types of reactors—so-called “advanced reactors”—that are radically ...

According to a recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2018), nuclear energy will play an important role in all scenarios in which global temperature rise is limited to 1.5°C above pre­industrial levels. One scenario even anticipates a sixfold increase in ...

Elections are the bedrock of America’s democracy. Citizens hold their govern­ment accountable by voting to elect or remove representatives and other officials and make important decisions about which policies are ­enacted. Elections must therefore be accurate and trustworthy. However, ...

An Interview with . . .Don Norman (NAE), Cognitive Engineer and Author

RON LATANISION (RML): We’re delighted that you’re available to speak with us today, Don. You are a trained electrical engineer who went on to become the founding director of the Department of Cognitive Science and ...

The responsibility of building scientific models has much in common with the responsibility of sitting in the exit row on an airplane. One can enjoy the extra leg room of creating imaginative models, but it comes with a price—being “willing and able” to fulfill life­saving ...