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Conference Spotlight
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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Fusion Science and Technology
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.
Kazunori Takahashi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 1 | May 2013 | Pages 123-126
doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A16886
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A thrust imparted by a permanent-magnets helicon plasma thruster is directly measured by using a pendulum thrust balance. The source consists of a 6.5-cm-inner diameter glass tube and a magnetic nozzle provided by arrays of permanent magnets. The configuration is designed so as to have maximum field strength of about 100 Gauss near the open end of the source. The flow rate of argon propellant is chosen as 25 sccm and a plasma is produced by 13.56 MHz helicon and/or inductively coupled discharges. The main plasma is guided by the magnetic nozzle and flows out from the source. It is observed that the whole structure of the source attached to the pendulum balance moves only during the plasma production, and its displacement is measured by a laser displacement sensor. The obtained maximum thrust is presently 7.5 mN for 2 kW rf power.
