The view from Asilomar

The waters of the Pacific Ocean off the Monterey Peninsula in California made a dramatic backdrop for the 2006 Plutonium Futures—The Science Conference, which took place July 9–13 at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove. This conference was the fourth in a series of important international conferences focused on plutonium and other actinides that was initiated in 1997 to enhance the international dialogue among scientists on the fundamental properties of plutonium and their technological consequences. This series was also intended to recapture the spirit of cooperation that was originally established in the “Plutonium” conferences that started in 1960 following President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech.

Co-organized by Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, the Plutonium Futures Conference was cosponsored by the American Nuclear Society, Elsevier, Quantum Design, and the FEI Company. The conference attracted 282 presentations from nearly 400 participants from 26 countries and covered the latest results in plutonium science and technology.

A popular aspect of the conference was the tutorial session on Sunday afternoon, which was well attended by novices and veterans alike and featured such diverse topics as plutonium metallurgy, plutonium in the environment, and international arms control and nonproliferation. During the week, two plenary lectures began each morning and afternoon session and highlighted the breakout sessions on coordination/organometallic chemistry, solid-state physics, environmental chemistry, materials science, separations and reprocessing, advanced fuels and waste forms, phase transformations, solution and gas-phase chemistry, compounds and complexes, electronic structure and physical properties, and more.

Lively roundtable discussions were held on Monday and Tuesday evenings and centered on Legacy Issues and New Strategies for Advanced Nuclear Fuel Cycles. Three poster sessions with a total of 185 presentations were held on Monday and Tuesday evenings and Wednesday afternoon and added greatly to the technical exchanges among the conference participants.

The Asilomar Beach and Conference Center, part of the California State Parks System, was itself one highlight of the conference. The name is derived from two Spanish words: “asilo,” meaning refuge, and “mar,” meaning sea. The Center encompasses 107 acres of coniferous forest separated from the ocean by sand dunes affording a significant ecological reserve. Conference participants walking through early morning fog encountered numerous birds, raccoons, deer, and warnings of mountain lions sighted in the area.

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