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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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October 2025
Latest News
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.
2020 ANS Virtual Winter Meeting Plenary Session Speaker
Dr. Kathryn McCarthy is Associate Laboratory Director, Fusion and Fission Energy and Science, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Her prior positions incude Vice-President, Science & Technology, and Laboratory Director for Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, Director of Domestic Programs for Nuclear Science and Technology (NS&T) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Director of the Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program Technical Integration Office, Deputy Associate Laboratory Director for NS&T, National Technical Director for the Systems Analysis Campaign for the DOE Fuel Cycle R&D Program. Dr. McCarthy was involved in various other nuclear fission and fusion programs before that; she was employed at the INL for 25 years. She was a Guest Scientist at the Kernforschungszentrum in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1989, and worked in the Soviet Union with the Department of Energy US/USSR Young Scientist Program (1989-1990), at the Efremov and Kurchatov Institutes in Russia, and the Latvian Academy of Science in Latvia.
Dr. McCarthy is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), and has held multiple ANS offices at the local and national level. Her awards include the an ANS Presidential citation in 2015 for “Leadership and guidance of the Light Water Reactor Sustainability effort….that has helped set the stage for US power companies to be able to make informed decisions regarding subsequent license renewal for their operating nuclear units…,” 2011 Nuclear Energy Advocate of the Year Award (given by the Partnership for Science and Technology), the 2011 Girl Scouts of Silver Sage Women of Today and Tomorrow Award, an American Nuclear Society Presidential Citation in 2007 for “…outstanding service to the ANS,” the 2000 ANS Women's Achievement Award, 1996 International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor U.S. Home Team Leadership Award, and the 1994 David Rose Award for Excellence in Fusion Engineering.
Education
B. S. in nuclear engineering from the University of Arizona
M.S. and Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles
Last modified October 26, 2020, 9:33am EDT
