Report of the 46th INMM Annual Meeting

That’s the question Charles Curtis, president of Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), posed to the participants during the 46th INMM Annual Meeting at the Marriott Desert Ridge Hotel and Resort in Phoenix. Curtis, this year’s plenary speaker, had just challenged the INMM to consider a potential institutional model for promulgating best practices for nuclear materials security by building an operational capacity within INMM to provide such best practices support globally on a full-time basis! It was an astounding challenge to INMM and the meeting participants— and it caught most of us by surprise. But, yes, what other organization except INMM—the world’s premier professional forum for the exchange of technical information, policy matters, and new ideas and initiatives in the international nuclear safeguards community—could be successful in such a venture! Plans are in the works by the Fellows Committee to address this challenge and provide the INMM Executive Committee with recommendations. (And you all thought INMM was really challenged by the imaginary scorpion scare in Phoenix two years ago followed by the trauma in 2004 when forty-three papers were cancelled a day before the meeting! We handled those superbly. Charlie Curtis and NTI have outdone those trials and I’m sure INMM will meet this test once again.)