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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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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.
Thomas J. Dolan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 40 | Number 2 | September 2001 | Pages 119-124
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A185
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The earth generates its own magnetic field via a dynamo effect in a conducting fluid. The sun and some other stars also generate self-magnetic fields on large spatial scales and long timescales. Laser-produced plasmas generate intense self-magnetic fields on very short spatial and time scales. Could similar phenomena occur on intermediate spatial scales and timescales, such as in a laboratory plasma? Two questions are posed for consideration: (a) At high electromagnetic wave power input into a low-pressure gas could a significant self-magnetic field be generated? (b) If a self-magnetic field were generated, would it evolve toward a minimum-energy state? If the answers turned out to be affirmative, then the use of self-magnetic fields could have interesting applications.
