Daniels to speak at nuclear conference in Indianapolis

What do the former governor of Indiana and Miss America have in common? Nuclear power, of course.

Mitch Daniels is a featured keynote speaker at the American Nuclear Society’s annual meeting in June. The reigning Miss America — Alaskan nuclear engineering student Grace Stanke — will also speak.

The theme for this year’s meeting, which runs June 11-14, is “failure is not an option.”

Daniels is scheduled to speak at a June 12 plenary session alongside Stanke, who is also zero-carbon advocate.

“Nuclear optimism is at a generational high,” a news release said. “However, tough challenges remain: a laborious licensing process, a domestic enrichment gap, lack of progress on nuclear waste policy, a steep scale-up of our workforce and supply chains, demonstrating first of a kind fission and fusion technologies, just to name a few.”

“It’s become increasingly clear that the world will not be able to solve its most fundamental climate and energy challenges without the power of nuclear technology,” the release continued. “As such, we cannot afford to merely kick these challenges down the road. We must face them head on. If nuclear fails, the planet fails. That is not an option.”

Other panel titles include “The Robots are Coming,” “Used Fuel – Going Somewhere?” and “NukeGPT,” involving a discussion of artificial intelligence.