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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
Günter Jacobs
Nuclear Technology | Volume 111 | Number 3 | September 1995 | Pages 351-357
Technical Paper | A New Light Water Reactor Safety Concept Special / Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A15865
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Estimates are presented of the thermal-hydraulic load acting on a pressurized water reactor pressure vessel and its support girder after lower head failure at high pressure (17 MPa). The estimates are based on onedimensional calculations performed with the RELAP5/MOD3 transient analysis thermal-hydraulics code. The information obtained provides a force-function input for structural dynamic calculations of an increased containment. On the assumption of a global circumferential rupture of the vessel lower head, the computations show a load peak of 340 MN and a continuing load of 160 MN acting on the vessel support ring. The analysis is related to the containment concept of Eibl, Kessler, and Hennies, which is aimed at developing passive mechanisms that can safely confine core-melt consequences.
