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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
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.
J. G. Moore, H. W. Godbee, A. H. Kibbey
Nuclear Technology | Volume 32 | Number 1 | January 1977 | Pages 39-52
Technical Paper | Materials in Waste Storage / Radioactive Waste | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31736
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The rates at which strontium, cesium, plutonium, and curium are leached from hydrofracture grout (a modified cement) were measured. These studies utilized the test method proposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency or a modification that exposed smaller specimens with a higher surface-to-volume ratio to a larger volume of leachant. The fraction of an isotope leached varied with the square root of time if the leachant was replaced more frequently than once per day, but was inhibited or depressed if replacement was made less often. The amount of strontium or cesium leached from the grout varied directly with the degree of drying during curing and inversely with the time of curing. Of the clay additives studied for enhancing cesium retention, Grundite (while satisfactory) was the least effective. In general, the isotope leach rate followed the order: Cs > Sr > Cm > Pu. The amount of an isotope leached as a function of time depended on the composition of the leachant and varied in the order: distilled water > tap water > grout water. Concentrating the waste by a factor of up to 4 (prior to incorporation into a grout) had little effect on the leach rate of either strontium or cesium. A comparison of the leach data for the grout with results reported previously by other investigators for other products indicates that the grout can provide leach rates comparable to those obtained for wastes incorporated into borosilicate glass. Theoretical relationships that consider diffusion and instantaneous reaction (an equilibrium or time-independent relationship between mobile and immobile forms of a species) were found to be in good agreement with the data for the 28-day-cured grout when the leachant was initially replaced twice per day. The credibility of laboratory results with simulated waste was substantiated by a short-term continuous leach test made on a fragment of a core sample of actual hydrofracture grout. The modified effective diffusivities [10−11 to 10−10 cm2/s (10−9 to 10−8 mm2/s), equivalent to a leach rate of the order of 10−7 g/(cm2 day) (10−9 g/mm2 · day)] for strontium and cesium calculated from these data are comparable to those obtained with specimens prepared in the laboratory.
