Avoiding Disaster: Perception and Reality: A Summary of the Closing Plenary Session of the 45th INMM Annual Meeting

In choosing this year’s closing plenary session theme, the Government Industry Liaison Committee examined drivers for our community. Sometimes our motivators are real-world events like 9/11 or the NASA shuttle disaster. Sometimes our motivators are public perception and our knowledge of what a terrorist act or an accident can result in when overlaid on our nuclear world. This year’s closing plenary session presented a cross section of these motivators. We were fortunate to have three very distinguished individuals presenting this year: Brigadier General Ronald Haeckel, U.S. Department of Energy Office of Defense Programs; Michael Brooks, CNN correspondent; and Mary Alice Hayward, senior policy advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy on national security matters. Haeckel discussed lessons learned from the NASA shuttle disaster and their application to the NNSA; Brooks discussed the roles and responsibilities of the media in events involving weapons of mass destruction; and Hayward discussed the Global Threat Reduction Initiative.