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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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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.
13th Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control & Human-Machine Interface Technologies (NPIC&HMIT 2023)
Technical Session|Panel
Tuesday, July 18, 2023|10:00–11:45AM EDT|301D
Session Chair:
Pareez Golub (Sargent & Lundy)
Session Organizer:
Raymond Herb (Southern Nuclear)
Since nuclear power is a key solution to meeting CO2 goals, utilities are pursuing subsequent license renewal of the existing fleet of light water reactors to meet the future demand up to 80 years and beyond. To support the extended life of the plant and address obsolete analog controls, most utilities are installing digital controls. Often ignored in these plans are the Main Control Rooms (MCRs), which will also need to be modernized. This is currently accomplished through piecemeal upgrade projects that occasionally add digital Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs) to the MCR. MCR modernization is best addressed as an integrated strategy to design the new HMIs in a standard, holistic manner supporting high quality operations. Additionally, the MCRs must address the next generation of operators and take full advantage of the digital systems capabilities to reduce operational risk through an evolving concept of operations. This panel will present the plans from several large utilities and industry HFE experts including aspects of strategic planning, evolving concepts of operations, HFE program development and licensing of those new digital main control rooms.
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