Everyone, So - for those of you who have been following the bouncing ball - you know that the Fuel Cycle R&D program (formerly known as GNEP and AFCI) has been holding reviews every six months. This means that over the ~2 years I have been back with DOE I have been to 4 of these reviews. Up until last Tuesday, the NEAMS presentations at these reviews have been anywhere from a yawn to an outright disaster (remember that time in April of 2008 with Gil, David Nowak, and me). I am very, very happy to report that last Tuesday the NEAMS presentations at the FCRD review were outstanding and very well received. My compliments to Hussein, Keith, Randy, Pratap, and Kevin for making a great set of presentations. I think everyone did an excellent job explaining the overall program and then getting into some specific details about the work that has been done and the connections it has with the other parts of FCRD. In particular, I want to thank everyone for the work you have all done to connect NEAMS with the other FCRD campaigns. It was very clear from the other campaigns that they are not relying on NEAMS to produce the capabilities they need to conduct their R&D. We have clearly come a long way over the last couple of years. For those of you who were involved at the time, in the early days we were either politely ignored or outright scorned. So once again, thanks to those who made the presentations last Tuesday and those did the hard work to make them possible. Regards, Alex ________________________________________________ Alex R. Larzelere Director, Advanced Modeling and Simulation Office of Nuclear Energy U.S. Department of Energy 202-586-1906 [email protected]