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November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Empowering the next generation: ANS’s newest book focuses on careers in nuclear energy
A new career guide for the nuclear energy industry is now available: The Nuclear Empowered Workforce by Earnestine Johnson. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience across 16 nuclear facilities, Johnson offers a practical, insightful look into some of the many career paths available in commercial nuclear power. To mark the release, Johnson sat down with Nuclear News for a wide-ranging conversation about her career, her motivation for writing the book, and her advice for the next generation of nuclear professionals.
When Johnson began her career at engineering services company Stone & Webster, she entered a field still reeling from the effects of the Three Mile Island incident in 1979, nearly 15 years earlier. Her hiring cohort was the first group of new engineering graduates the company had brought on since TMI, a reflection of the industry-wide pause in nuclear construction. Her first long-term assignment—at the Millstone site in Waterford, Conn., helping resolve design issues stemming from TMI—marked the beginning of a long and varied career that spanned positions across the country.
C. Petitjean, F. Atchison, G. Heidenreich, H. K. Walter, F. Amelotti, R. Andreani, F. de Marco, S. Monti, M. Pillon, M. Vecchi, V. E. Markushin, L. I. Ponomarev, C. Niebuhr
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 25 | Number 4 | July 1994 | Pages 437-450
Technical Paper | Fusion Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A30251
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A design study is presented for an intense 14-MeV neutron source based on muon-catalyzed fusion to be used for first-wall and blanket material research for future fusion reactors. Negative pions are produced inside a 5- to 10-T magnetic field by an intense deuteron beam interacting with a 30- to 50-cm-long carbon target. The pions and the muons resulting from the decay of pions inflight are collected in the backward direction and stopped in a high-density deuterium-tritium (D-T) target. With an 18-MWdeuteron beam at 1.5 GeV (12 mA = 7.5 × 1016 d/s), ∼ 1016 π−/s can be generated, which will decay to muons of which up to 1015 μ−/s stop in the D-T mixture. Assuming Xc = 100 fusions per muon, muon-catalyzed fusion produces 14-MeV neutrons with a source strength of up to 1017 n/s, i.e., a neutron power of 200 kW. A neutron flux of up to 1014/cm2·s (10 dpa/yr) can be achieved in test volumes of several litres. These numbers, however, do not represent a technological limit. This source has about the same power efficiency for neutron generation as low-energy beams (d-Li stripping). It also has the advantage of producing the original 14-MeV fusion spectrum without tails, isotropically into a 4π solid angle. In addition, the power density and heat load of the primary target are a considerably smaller problem. The environment of the secondary target, the neutron source itself, can be made to resemble part of the tokamak ring to be simulated. The noninteracting part of the beam (30 to 40%) can be disposed of separately or reused for another facility (e.g., a spallation neutron source).