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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.
Vladimir Kogan, Philip M. Schumacher
Nuclear Technology | Volume 161 | Number 2 | February 2008 | Pages 190-202
Technical Note | Miscellaneous | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3922
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper summarizes the results of an independent review of information from the available literature on plutonium release parameters obtained in worldwide studies on accidental fires that might occur in nuclear facilities and generates technically justifiable recommendations on plutonium releases based on this review. This work was limited to the accidental fires in nuclear facilities involving plutonium-contaminated waste materials that can be in either solid or liquid form, as well as involving plutonium metal itself. Releases of plutonium are expressed in terms of the airborne release fraction (ARF), defined as the total fraction of initial material released in the accident, or the airborne release rate, which is the average rate at which ARF is released for the duration of the accident. Respirable fraction of the mass of plutonium dispersed in the air is conditionally assumed to include particles having aerodynamic diameters smaller than 10 m (aerodynamic diameter of a particle is defined as the diameter of a unit density sphere having the same aerodynamic properties as the particle; particles of any shape or density will have the same aerodynamic diameter if their settling velocity is the same). For intense fires in solid waste storage areas or large explosions associated with plutonium metal, up to 50% of the plutonium contamination may be released as respirable aerosol.