b'S T R AT E G I C P L A NDear colleagues,N early 70 years ago, the United States established the National Reactor Testing Station on the sprawling Idaho desert to be a hub of nuclear energy innovation. The promise of nuclear energy was tremendousit was envisioned to supply energy too cheap to meter. The research conducted here led to the creation of an entire industrycommercial nuclear poweras well as the strategic infrastructures and partnerships essential to creating the regulatory, legal, operational and international norms for that industry. It was an exciting time. Today, the commercial nuclear power industry in the United States is undergoing market-driven change with early closure of reactors and stiff competition in the energy market. The headlines are daunting, and the news about the current fleet rarely seems positive.Outside of the U.S., however, the market environment for nuclear energy is much John Wagnerdifferent. Population-dense countries such as India and China are investing heavily in Associate Lab Directornuclear energy to support their growing economies. Nuclear energy deployment around Nuclear Science &the world is growing at its fastest pace in 25 years, creating a multitrillion-dollar global Technologymarket. At the same time, the world faces unprecedented environmental challenges as it tries to provide clean electricity to a world of 8 billion people. And nuclear energy is an essential part of the global response. American companies and entrepreneurs are responding by pursuing a new generation of advanced reactors markedly different from todays fleet. They are smaller, modular, and can be used to generate electricity as well as power industrial processes. American innovation once again is poised to drive the global market.As a national laboratory, our challenge and opportunity today is as profound as it was 70 years ago. But it is different. It must be. We must develop approaches to help existing technologies be more economical while also creating and demonstrating disruptive innovations that lead to expanded markets for nuclear energy in the global economy. In this pursuit, we will work with the Department of Energy to establish the National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) at INL, with exciting research and demonstration challenges and home to incredible new national strategic assets including small modular reactors, microreactor systems with groundbreaking operations simplicity, and world-leading science machines such as the versatile test reactor. INL will lead in creating and defining this next phase of global nuclear energy. We will once again change the world and establish Americas place in the growing global energy marketplace. And as we do so, we will deploy our science, our engineering, and our infrastructure to tackle a host of national challenges and build the next-generation laboratory, directorate, and research culture. The promise of our laboratory and our technologies is as great as ever.I am excited by the opportunities before us and am confident that we will rise to the challenge ahead.Sincerely,John Wagner1'