NETS2021 took place in a virtual environment, Gather.Town, where attendees could interact with each other individually as well as join group sessions.
For years, Oak Ridge National Laboratory planned to host the Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS) conference. The lab, which produces plutonium oxide to power deep-space missions, as well as other materials used in radioisotope power systems, hoped to offer tours of the High Flux Isotope Reactor, the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center and the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, spotlighting ORNL’s contributions to NASA’s programs.
Last year’s NETS was set to be in East Tennessee — and then, mere weeks before, came the coronavirus pandemic, which shut down travel and gathering, cancelling 2020’s conference.
With precautions still in place in 2021, ORNL and NETS decided to innovate — into a whole new space.
NETS 2021, hosted jointly by ORNL and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, took place April 26-30 in a virtual meeting program, Gather.Town, that let attendees’ avatars travel to different areas of a meeting hall, interacting with one another and participating in sessions much like they would have in real life.
“When we decided early on to go ahead and host NETS 2021, we knew it had to be virtual,” said Bob Wham, who leads ORNL’s Pu-238 production supply program. “We didn’t think people would be back at work. We knew some people wouldn’t want to travel. This conference relies on a lot of people coming in from different places.”
More than 285 people from 12 countries attended the conference. A little more than half represented various government entities, with the remainder private industry and students and faculty from various institutions. Wham said the conference appeals to anyone “interested in what NASA is doing and what kind of support NASA might need.”
The conference’s theme, “Back to the Moon and on to Mars through advancing nuclear technologies and innovation,” “capitalizes on the energy and excitement of Mars 2020 — a highlight of this decade,” said Richard Howard of Idaho National Laboratory, who served as assistant general chair of NETS 2021. Given Perseverance’s success, “we decided forgoing another year of NETS would be unacceptable.”
Sessions and panels centered around four tracks: radioisotopes and power conversion systems; nuclear fission power and propulsion; mission concepts and policy for nuclear space systems; and advanced and emerging technologies for nuclear space applications. In addition, experts discussed topics including commercial lunar payload services, powering the next generation of space exploration, advanced reactors, concepts for an interstellar probe, and NASA’s upcoming Dragonfly mission to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
“The Mars 2020 mission is a reminder of how nuclear science can change the world — most importantly, to inspire future generations of nuclear scientists,” said Balendra Sutharshan, ORNL’s associate lab director for Isotope Science and Engineering. “It is also a reminder of the role ORNL had in making Perseverance a reality. Our contribution to NASA’s mission will not end with Perseverance. We continue to invest efforts with the goal of producing kilograms of plutonium-238 on site by 2026.
“As the Department of Energy’s largest energy and science lab, we have an exceptional and diverse team of experts, from materials to isotopes and beyond, who have clearly risen to the challenge of our nation’s efforts to explore and understand our universe. We are excited for future missions and how we can continue to play a part in making those missions a reality.”
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
