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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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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.
Yukimoto Maeda, Takafumi Aoyama, Toshihiro Odo, Satoru Nakai, Soju Suzuki
Nuclear Technology | Volume 150 | Number 1 | April 2005 | Pages 16-36
Technical Paper | Sodium Technology | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3602
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The experimental fast reactor JOYO at the O-arai Engineering Center of the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute is the first liquid sodium fast reactor in Japan. The purpose of constructing JOYO was to obtain technical information about liquid-metal fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs) through experience with their design, construction, and operation and to use the reactor as a fast neutron irradiation facility for the development of fuels, materials, and other components required for the LMFBR program. Through design, construction, testing, operation, and maintenance experience, JOYO has contributed much to the LMFBR development program. In addition to providing operating experience, many kinds of irradiation tests have been conducted for the development of fuels and materials under the conditions of higher fast neutron flux and temperature than those in light water reactors. JOYO has been operated successfully for a quarter-century without any serious problem, and this operation demonstrated the safety and reliability of the sodium-cooled fast reactor.The reactor has just been upgraded to the MK-III core to increase irradiation capability for playing a greater role in providing an irradiation field as a fast reactor. Given the worldwide trend of fast reactor shutdowns, JOYO is an increasingly valuable world resource for current and future reactor development.
