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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!
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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.
Kosuke Aizawa, Kaoru Fujita, Shingo Hirata, Naoto Kasahara
Nuclear Technology | Volume 183 | Number 1 | July 2013 | Pages 1-12
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A16988
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A conceptual design study of Japan Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (JSFR) is in progress in the Fast Reactor Cycle Technology Development (FaCT) project in Japan. In the design of JSFR, a selector valve mechanism is adopted for its failed-fuel detection and location (FFDL) system. Since JSFR has only two FFDL units for [approximately]600 fuel subassemblies due to its compact design of the reactor vessel, one FFDL unit must handle a much larger number of subassemblies than in previous designs. In addition, during the long plant life of 60 years, the wear length of the selector valve will become longer than those of past reactors. Therefore, the endurance of the selector valve becomes important. To demonstrate the manufacturability and endurance of the selector valve, a full-size mockup valve including coating to protect the sliding mechanism was manufactured, and an endurance experiment of the mockup model under high-temperature sodium was conducted. Dimensional inspections and seal performance showed manufacturability of the selector valve. The cross-section observation, hardness measurement, and chemical assay results after the endurance experiment showed that the coating layer on the sliding surface still remains. Thus, the endurance of the JSFR selector valve was demonstrated.
