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Conference Spotlight
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.
James R. Lilienthal was elected President of the American Nuclear Society in 1972. He joined the American Nuclear Society in 1958 and served in a number of positions, including chair of the Remote Systems Technology Division, member of the Program Committee, Publications Committee, Board of Directors, Executive Committee, Finance Committee, Nominating Committee, and the 1968 International Meeting Steering Committee.
Lilienthal was born on August 14, 1916. He started his career in 1940, doing acceptance tests and designing servosystems for gyrocompasses and associated fire control equipment for Sperry Gyroscope Company. During the war, he became assistant product engineer for development and production of an airborne gyroscopically stabilized radar system for B29s.
In early 1947, he moved to Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (now Los Alamos National Laboratory), where he initially headed the Special Problems Group of the Chemistry Metallurgy Research (CMR) Division. There, he worked on the design and construction of the first hot cell laboratory at LASL. This in turn led him, in 1948, to help establish a Hot Laboratory Committee with several others. Among them was Mel Feldman, who would later become ANS president (1975-76). The Hot Laboratory Committee merged with ANS in 1958 and became the Remote Systems Technology Division.
In 1950, Lilienthal became group leader of the Instrumentation and Engineering Group. In that capacity, he designed and handled the instrumentation for the first thermonuclear weapons test codename “Mike,” which took place at Eniwetok in the South Pacific in 1952. He worked on Eniwetok for six weeks as part of a project known as “Operation Ivy.”
Back at LASL, he worked on the design and construction of the CMR Materials Sciences Building in the early 1950s. Later, he worked on another hot cell complex for examining irradiated uranium fuel and irradiated plutonium. In 1967, he was also named assistant division leader of the CMR Division (which later became two divisions—the Chemistry-Materials Science Division and the Chemistry-Nuclear Chemistry Division—with Lilienthal as assistant division leader of both).
He retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1977.
Lilienthal earned a bachelor’s degree in naval architecture and marine engineering from Webb Institute of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering in 1938.
James Lilienthal died on September 8, 1995.
Read Nuclear News from July 1972 for more on Jim Lilienthal.
