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.
Wayne R. Meier, Edward C. Morse
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 8 | Number 3 | November 1985 | Pages 2681-2695
Technical Paper | Blanket Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A24689
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method for optimizing the design of a fusion reactor blanket as a function of several design variables is applied to a modified version of the HYLIFE inertial confinement fusion reactor. This reactor concept uses an inner liquid lithium blanket for breeding tritium and an outer manganese-steel blanket to increase the fusion energy multiplication factor. The capital cost per unit of net electric power produced is minimized subject to constraints on the tritium breeding ratio and the radiation damage rate in the first structural wall. The optimal design has a 0.9-m-thick lithium blanket denatured to 0.1 % 6Li.
