Mark your calendars for the ANS Student Conference

Spring will be here before we know it, and with it will come the 2026 ANS Student Conference, which will take place April 16-18 in College Station, Texas, at Texas A&M University.

Registration for the conference is now open. Click here to learn more.

The details: The theme of this year's student conference is "Don't Mess with Nuclear," reflecting both the resilience and responsibility that define the pursuit of nuclear technology.

From Thursday to Saturday, the conference will feature an exciting lineup of workshops, tours, events, and presentations. Planned workshop topics run the gamut from career preparation and industry overviews to and program deep dives, and include the following:

• Radiation detection and emergency response.
• System analysis.
• AI anomaly detection.
• OpenFOAM.
• MOOSE.
• Nuclear deterrence.
• Nuclear safety.
• Security tabletop.
• Networking.
• MontePy.
• Interview strategies.
• Nuclear advocacy.

Tours galore: This year's tour schedule is particularly noteworthy, with 11 different tours planned:

• The Molten Salt Research Reactor at Abilene Christian University, an advanced reactor project being built in partnership with Natura Resources and the Department of Energy.
• The Nuclear Science Center, Accelerator Laboratory, and Heat Transfer Systems Laboratory at Texas A&M, which features the university's 1-MWt TRIGA reactor.
• The Deep Borehole Demonstration Center, a nonprofit facility dedicated to studying deep borehole drilling and nuclear waste storage technologies.
• The facilities of Aalo Atomics, another partner in the DOE's Reactor Pilot Program that is aiming to get its reactor on line by July 4.
• Comanche Peak nuclear power plant, which features two 1,200-MWe pressurized water reactors and has been in operation since 1990.
• South Texas Project nuclear power plant, another two-unit PWR in southern Texas.
• Texas A&M's George H.W. Bush Presidential Library.
• Texas A&M's RELLIS facilities, where attendees will have the opportunity to tour energy research laboratories and the Energy Proving Grounds, where four advanced reactors will be placed on Texas A&M land.
• Texas A&M's NuScale Simulator & Thermal Hydraulics Laboratory, where students will get the chance to see what advanced reactor operation looks like.
• Texas A&M's Cyclotron Institute, the university's world-class particle accelerator facility.
• Texas A&M's Fuel Cycle Materials Laboratory and Electron Beam Food Research Facility.