March has been a difficult one for the nuclear industry marred by the events in Japan. The scenes of the tsunami were horrific which was then followed by the unfolding incident around the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi site with the associated fear fueled by all sorts of speculations on how things would play out. The average person does not understand radiation and very soon the almost incomprehensible casualty numbers of the earthquake and tsunami appeared to take second place to the radiation incident. I think one of the saddest comments was from one Japanese survivor who said he would take another tsunami any day compared to the events unfolding at the reactor site.

As part of our strategic plan we have discussed how we can engage the media and build up a relationship that promotes understanding and leads to hopefully more responsible and balanced reporting of issues. We had to think on our feet a bit for this one and I was pleased that Richard Wakeford who you may have seen on a number of news programmes, together with Rick Hallard were able and willing to drop everything and respond to media enquiries on behalf of the SRP. During this process we have developed a relationship with the Science Media Centre which we now need to maintain. Whilst I would not want to down play the seriousness of the incident I think the outcome of their involvement together with others like them has been a much clearer and fairer analysis of events. My thanks should also go to Tessa Harris who had to field e-mails and queries on what turned into a busy Monday morning before we were able to establish our response. I should also mention Chris Englefield who added the initial useful information to the Website.

I have now chaired my last Council Meeting which was held once again in Birmingham. As usual we had a very full agenda which is a measure of how busy we are in the Society and the contributions being made by so many. We are putting together the finishing touches to the Annual Report which will be available on the website in a few weeks which, as I alluded to last month, will be supplemented by a more glossy version which hopefully will be picked up and browsed by a much wider audience. Sheila Liddle has been instrumental in pulling that together and it is looking very good.

We have two newly elected members of council namely Peter Marsden and Amber Bannon who I know will be excellent additions to the committee. It is unfortunate that two candidates, Jennifer Humphries and Ludovic Chevallereau were not successful on this occasion but there was a good spread of votes and hopefully they will put their names forward next time. I know they are both involved in the Rising Generations Group and Ludovic chairs the Awards and Sponsorship Committee for which I am very grateful.

On the 31^st March SRP held a one day meeting in Oxford on “Instruments of choice” which was organized by the Practical Radiation Protection Topic Group chaired by Peter Burgess. Feedback from the event has been good with requests for more of the same please! That sounds like a resounding endorsement to me and something we will be looking into. My thanks to all those involved in pulling that event together.

I picked up my son from Bristol University yesterday which tells me that Easter is almost upon us already. People are telling me it is much later this year but it feels like I’ve only just taken down the Christmas decorations! I know that many members will be taking a few days off particularly taking advantage of a few concurrent bank holidays. Whatever you chose to do I hope you enjoy the break and we are all lucky with some decent weather.

Richard