On Monday, Feb 24, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) unveiled its Future of Energy advertising campaign with a press conference at the National Press Club.
The campaign will stress four major aspects of nuclear energy that are not as well understood as they should be.
It will talk about the importance of nuclear energy in a diverse portfolio of electricity generation sources, the value of the high quality jobs associated with the industry, the environmental benefits it provides as a clean air source of power generation and the exciting technologies being developed that will enhance nuclear energy’s value in the future.
The campaign features four primary spokespeople, Leslie Dewan, Patrick Moore, Mark Verbeck, and Vicky Bailey. Each of these people approach their advocacy of nuclear energy from different perspectives.
Leslie Dewan recently earned her PhD in Nuclear Engineering from MIT. While there, she partnered with a fellow student to develop a conceptual design for a reactor that will run on the material that is discharged as “waste” from the current generation of power plants. Instead of seeing that valuable material placed into deep underground repositories, Leslie and her team at Transatomic Power would prefer to use the material to create vast quantities of emission free electricity that could help, as she mentioned at the press conference, save the polar bears. Here is what Leslie said about her excitement and future optimism.