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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.
A. Abou-Sena, A. Ying, M. Abdou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 1 | July 2003 | Pages 79-84
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - MFE Chamber Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A314
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Beryllium, in its pebble form, has been proposed in various blanket concepts to serve different purposes. Thermal property data for such a heterogeneous packed bed is needed, particularly data on the impact of compression forces on its magnitude and consequent temperature profile. The objectives of this work are to obtain and quantify experimental data on the effective thermal conductivity of a Be-He packed bed, on the interface heat conductance between Be and SiC, and on the effects of externally applied pressure on these effective thermal properties. The effective thermal conductivity of a Be-He pebble bed increases as the bed mean temperature increases. The values of effective thermal conductivity vary from 2.15 to 3.00 W/m.K for bed mean temperature ranges from 90 to 420 °C. Similar temperature effects are seen in the Be/SiC interface heat conductance, as the values of interface heat conductance range from 1140 to 2200 W/m2.K. In addition, effective thermal conductivity increases remarkably with the increase of applied pressure (by a factor of 2.53 at 2 MPa), while it remains higher than the initial value by ~0.3 W/m.K when external pressure is released (hysteresis effect).