ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
Standards Program
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
October 2025
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.
Jin Jiang, Chao Zhang, Binggang Cui (The Univ of Western Ontario)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1406-1415
Supercritical water-cooled reactor (SCWR) has very unique characteristics which are very different from traditional nuclear power plants. Even though there are many advantages associated with this new technology, it does pose several unique circumstances that one has not encountered in traditional reactors. Major differences are: the higher power density; higher operating temperature and pressure; and lack of steam generator to isolate the reactor from balanced of the plant so that a load variation can back-propagated to the rector system. These unique characteristics call for advanced control systems to ensure safety and operational efficiency. In this paper, a Supercritical Fossil-fired Power Plant has been analyzed in terms of dynamic interactions among different parts of the plant, and also modes of operation. Differences between Supercritical Fossil-fired Power Plant and Supercritical Water-cooled Reactor based plant have been analyzed. The results of analysis have indicated that advanced coordination control systems have to be used in order to ensure safe operation of the reactor as well as the entire plant.
