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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
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.
Sung-Ryul Huh, Nam-Kyun Kim, Hyun-Joon Roh, Gon-Ho Kim
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 1 | July 2015 | Pages 171-177
Technical Note | Open Magnetic Systems 2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-887
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A novel laser-assisted Hα spectroscopy is proposed to measure negative ion density in a hydrogen plasma. The laser-induced photodetachment of negative ions leads to a decrease in Hα intensity due to blocking of the mutual neutralization channel associated with generation of H (n=3) atoms. The relationship between the reduced Hα intensity and the negative ion density is investigated experimentally and analytically. It is observed that the reduced Hα intensity follows the trend in the negative ion density as a function of pressure, indicating that this spectroscopy holds promise for determining the negative ion density. In addition, a departure from linearity between the reduced Hα intensity and the negative ion density is also analyzed because it can affect the quantitative determination of the negative ion density in the laser-assisted Hα spectroscopy. The departure is found to be attributed to the change in the mutual neutralization reaction rates depending on plasma conditions.