I look forward to the special session of the Accelerator Section at the 2005 Health Physics Society (HPS) Annual Meeting at the Spokane, Washington, Convention Center, July 10-14, 2005.
Many thanks to all of you for your positive responses to the call for papers, and to our president-elect, Lorraine Day, who has been working hard organizing this year's special session. This year's annual meeting is the 50th anniversary of the HPS hosted by the Columbia Chapter of the HPS.
In the last issue of the newsletter, I reported on the contributions of the Accelerator Section members to the implementation guide for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Order 420.2B, "Safety of Accelerator Facilities." Thanks to DeVaughn Nelson and DOE for soliciting our input and involving the community in shaping this important document. The draft guidance has now been officially entered into the comments system. See DOE G 420.2-X, "Accelerator Facility Safety Implementation Guide". Comments on the guide are due April 19, 2005.
Scott Walker and James Liu, co-chairs of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) N43.1 committee on Accelerator Radiological Safety Standards, are meeting with the ANSI N43 committee at their March 29 meeting in Washington, D.C. Plans are to submit the final draft to the ANSI N43 committee for approval in April 2005. For more details please see the article by Liu and Walker in this issue of the newsletter.
In the last three months, the board members, especially Past-President Bob Casey and President-Elect Lorraine Day, have been actively seeking and nominating prominent health physicists to the HPS to be considered for different lectureship recognitions. I would solicit your help now in planning for potential officers and directors. We will be electing two directors, and a president-elect. The official call for nominations will go out shortly. Your strong participation in this process is appreciated by all of the section's officers.