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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.
Ryan J. Hoover, Kenji Shimada
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 11 | November 2024 | Pages 2204-2214
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2312022
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Transient mitigation for nuclear power plants is essential for safe operation. The fourth industrial revolution brings with it the potential for data-based predictive maintenance and identifying remaining time of life for degrading components. An improvement to predictive maintenance would be to address continued operation with faulty components between the time of identification and eventual replacement. The ability to perform data analysis and contemporary digital control systems allows for data-driven control system actions. A methodology is developed herein to train a neural network that can map desired system performance and current plant component capability to control system settings. Simulations of plant transients were recorded and used to train a neural network. This neural network was tested with different target performance goals. The results show that the trained neural network recommended settings that affected the control system response so as to meet the target performance goals.