ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
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
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
May 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2025
Nuclear Technology
June 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
UWC 2022 speaker
As Westinghouse’s Vice President of Long-Term Operations (LTO), Sonya collaborates with utilities throughout the world to ensure safe, reliable, and profitable plant operability beyond the original design basis. She is responsible for integrating solutions, leveraging the collective creativity and insights of the owner’s group, and driving the use of digitalization to modernize operations.
Prior to her current role, Sonya served for nearly ten years in Westinghouse’s account management organization, in various leadership roles, eventually as Region Vice President, where she was intimately involved with fuel and component supply, challenging engineering scopes, instrumentation and controls upgrades, outage services and first-of-a-kind technology development and delivery.
Sonya’s Westinghouse career includes leadership positions in Corporate Strategy, partnership development, product management and contracting. During her tenure as Product Manager, Steam Generator Services, she commercialized seven new products.
In Westinghouse’s New Plant business, Sonya completed an intensive training program in Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing principles. Thereafter, she led diverse teams involved with the first AP1000 contract, before becoming the manager of continuous improvement.
Sonya built a strong foundation of serving the needs of plant operators, beginning twenty-five years ago, as a Board-Certified safety engineer. She supported routine outage services as well as large-scale field projects such as chemical cleaning, steam generator sleeving, split pin, reactor vessel head replacements and 10-year in-service inspections.
Sonya holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, is a Six Sigma Black Belt, and is a graduate of Duquesne University’s Executive Leadership and Harvard Business Review’s High Potential programs.
Last modified August 4, 2022, 7:17am EDT
