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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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.
Oleg G. Povetko
Nuclear Technology | Volume 163 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 31-37
Technical Paper | High-Level Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3967
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radioactive waste-handling operations at a potential high-level radioactive waste (HLW) geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, would involve receiving, processing, aging, and emplacing HLW equivalent to 70 000 t of heavy metal. This paper presents results of an independent analysis of the external radiation dose fields for various designs at a potential repository underground facility, performed at the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses. In order to analyze dose fields, radiation source terms have been developed for commercial spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies. Full-scale three-dimensional models of waste packages and underground repository drifts were used in the Monte Carlo radiation transport simulations. Radiation dose rates along the drifts have been evaluated for multiple waste packages for SNF-emitted photons, neutrons, and 60Co photons. Analysis shows that SNF photons contribute >68%, 60Co photons contribute <30%, and neutrons contribute <2% to the total dose rates. The contribution of photons scattered off the drift walls is <10% of the total dose rates. The drift elbow significantly blocks direct radiation shine and reduces scattered dose rates at the junction of turnout and main access drifts where workers could be present.
