APS Board of Directors Approves Two Statements

On September 17, 2016, the APS Board of Directors approved the following two statements:

HEU Reactor Conversion

The Board of the American Physical Society supports the crucial need to reduce, with the goal of ultimately eliminating, the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) to fuel civilian research reactors as called for by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in its 2016 report Reducing the Use of Highly Enriched Uranium in Civilian Research Reactors. Since HEU can be readily used to construct nuclear weapons, minimizing it as a fuel in civilian reactors is an important step toward reducing proliferation risks in the United States and throughout the world.

The Lincoln Project: Excellence and Access in Public Higher Education

The American Physical Society Board of Directors commends the American Academy of Sciences for its report on public research universities, Recommitting to Lincoln’s Vision: An Educational Compact for the 21st Century. The report, co-chaired by Robert Birgeneau and Mary Sue Coleman, provides a sobering account of the decline in public research university support — a drop of 34 percent nationwide in just the last decade — and its implications for America’s future. The report contains a set of thoughtful recommendations for (1) public research universities, (2) state government, (3) the federal government and (4) the private sector that are worthy of serious consideration. The American Physical Society Board recognizes that public research universities represent only one segment of the public higher education establishment and urges concerted study by scholarly and educational organizations of the broader problems of public higher education support.

For more information on these and other Board Statements, please visit the Board Statements webpage.