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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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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.
Charles A. Gentile, John J. Parker, Gregory L. Guttadora
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 700-705
Decontamination and Waste | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22677
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has developed a process by which to significantly reduce surface and near surface tritium contamination from various materials. The Oxidative Tritium Decontamination System (OTDS) reacts gaseous state ozone (accelerated by presence of catalyst), with tritium entrained/deposited on the surface of components (stainless steel, copper, plastics, ceramics, etc.) for the purpose of activity reduction by means of oxidation-reduction chemistry.1 In addition to removing surface and near surface tritium contamination from (high monetary value) components for re-use in non-tritium environments, the OTDS has the capability of removing tritium from the surfaces of expendable items, which can then be disposed of in a less expensive fashion. The OTDS can be operated in a batch mode by which up to approximately 20kg of tritium contaminated (expendable) items can be processed and decontaminated to levels permissible for free release (< 16.66Bq/100cm2). This paper will discuss the OTDS process, the level of tritium surface contamination removed from various materials, and a technique for “deep scrubbing” tritium from sub-surface layers.
