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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.
J. C. Nomine, J. F. Ferriot
Nuclear Technology | Volume 115 | Number 2 | August 1996 | Pages 214-227
Technical Paper | Characterization of Radioactive Waste in France / Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35268
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Performing leach tests provides quality assurance and verification that radioactive waste packages are acceptable for final shallow land burial, in accordance with environmental policy. An overview assessment was completed on the leaching tests and on the leachability of various waste forms, regarding both the industrial and the research and development aspects of the leachability and illustrated by several examples. The most important aspects extracted from this overview are as follows: 1. Leaching tests must be performed on all types of package candidates for an ultimate near-surface disposal whatever the waste form: The corresponding results are necessary for the safety assessment demonstration of the disposal site. 2. Representativeness of leached specimens remains to be fully proved, especially when they are small samples (problems of size and also of leached surface). 3. Quality of the waste packages whose type has been accepted should be periodically audited to establish deviations from the quality agreed on. 4. An exhaustive material balance of the released activity in leachates and fixed on surfaces must be established when performing leaching tests, especially for alpha emitters that can become attached to surfaces in the leaching loops. 5. Influence of temperature and pressure on the leaching results have been identified as important factors for cesium leaching of cemented waste. 6. More generally, there has been good progress in leaching knowledge, but the influence of many parameters, such as durability effect on leaching, remains incompletely defined.
