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Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
2022 ANS Annual Meeting
Dr. Kathy McCarthy, Associate Laboratory Director for the Fusion and Fission Energy and Science Directorate, joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) after three years as Vice President for Science and Technology and Laboratory Director for the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. She previously held a variety of engineering and leadership roles at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), including Director of Domestic Programs in INL’s Nuclear Science and Technology Directorate, Director of the Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program Technical Integration Office, and National Technical Director for the Systems Analysis Campaign for DOE Office of Nuclear Energy’s Fuel Cycle R&D Program.
McCarthy began her career in fusion technology with a focus on liquid metal blanket designs. She was a participant in the US DOE US-USSR Young Scientist program, which included working at the Efremov Institute in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia, the Latvian Academy of Sciences in Riga, Latvia, and the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, Russia, and was also a Guest Scientist at the Kernforschungzentrum Karlsruhe (now the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) in Karlsruhe, West Germany.
McCarthy earned her Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a major field of fusion engineering and minor fields of nuclear science and engineering, and physics – electricity and magnetism. She was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2019 and has received two American Nuclear Society (ANS) presidential citations. Her awards include the 1996 ITER US Home Team Leadership Award, and the 1994 David Rose Award for Excellence in Fusion Engineering. McCarthy served on the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee from 1999 to 2013 and on the US ITER Technical Advisory Committee from 2010 to 2013 and has held numerous ANS leadership positions. She was elected as a fellow of the American Nuclear Society in 2021.
Last modified May 26, 2022, 6:52am PDT
