I decided in 2022 that soon it would be time to step aside as editor of Nuclear Technology to allow a new voice to guide the journal. That time has come. It has been more than eight years since I took up the responsibilities of editor, and I can say that it has been a tremendous pleasure to serve the American Nuclear Society (ANS) in this capacity. These years have provided some very interesting and changing times for the Society, nuclear science, technology and energy, and the technical journal publishing world. Over the years, the Society’s three technical journals have maintained themselves as well-respected places for scientists and engineers to publish their research developments and successes. They also continue to provide peer-reviewed places to discuss, review, analyze, and debate our difficulties and sometimes failures, as well as for many of us important places to document and advance the development of our careers.
It has been equally interesting to observe the changes within ANS as the Society moved from self-publication of its technical journals to a professional publishing company, Taylor & Francis. Our partnership with Taylor & Francis has been extremely important to the modernization and enhanced competitiveness of our journals, as well as opening free online access to all ANS members. Additionally, within ANS it has been exciting to see the evolution of the Society from staff leadership by an executive director to leadership by a chief executive officer.
On the more technical side, over the past eight years we have broadened the scope of Nuclear Technology, which was admittedly already very wide, through the addition of some important areas including small, modular, micro, and space reactors; uncertainty quantification analysis; machine learning; artificial intelligence applications; additive manufacturing; human-machine interfaces; integrated and hybrid energy systems; and interdisciplinary socio-technical scholarship on nuclear energy. All these new areas of scope for Nuclear Technology look to provide new directions and opportunities for better understanding of our nuclear systems and their development and deployment in the years ahead.
It has been interesting to utilize the growth and importance of special issues and critical review articles covering new topics, new areas, and new conferences to Nuclear Technology. Significant examples over the years include special issues on Fukushima, the Manhattan Project, microreactors, the Kilopower Project, as well as a special issue covering the nexus between the nuclear, humanities, and social science communities, and more. Critical review papers are aimed at combining a highly focused topical overview with an extensive literature review to critically evaluate certain topical areas. They also offer an opportunity for leading researchers to put a marker down on the current state of the art.
In closing, I want to thank the leadership of ANS for giving me this opportunity to serve and to thank all of the Nuclear Technology associate editors and editorial advisory board members for their help. I especially want to thank all of the members of our community who have submitted manuscripts and those of you who have worked diligently and served as manuscript reviewers. I also wish to thank all of the ANS Publications Department leadership and staff for making the journals so professional and enabling the flow of papers through the submission, review, and production processes. Without any of you it would have been impossible to serve as the editor for this outstanding technical journal. And finally, I wish my successor, Professor Yassin A. Hassan of Texas A&M University, all the best as the journal moves ahead. In every way, Nuclear Technology—both the journal and the technologies that it represents—is in good hands!
—Andrew C. Klein
Editor, July 2015–September 2023