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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.
K. Kalyanam, A. Leilabadi, O. El-Behairy, G. I. D. Williams, H. K. Vogt
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 301-304
Technical Paper | Environment and Safety | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1818
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Ontario Power Generation Nuclear (OPGN) has a 4 x 880 MWe CANDU nuclear station at its Darlington Nuclear Division located in Bowmanville. The station operates a Tritium Removal Facility (TRF) to reduce and maintain low tritium levels in the Moderator and Heat Transport heavy water systems of Ontario's CANDU fleet by extracting, concentrating, immobilizing and storing as a metal tritide. Minimizing tritium releases to the environment is of paramount importance to ensure that dose to the public is as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) and to maintain credibility with the Public. Tritium is removed from the Cryogenic Distillation System to the Tritium Immobilization System (TIS) glove box via a transfer line that is protected by a rupture disc and relief valve. An overpressure event in 2003 had caused the rupture disc to blow, resulting in the release of a significant quantity of elemental tritium into the relief valve discharge line, which ties into the contaminated exhaust system.As a result of a few similar events occurring over a number of years of TRF operation, the released elemental tritium would have been converted to tritium oxide in the presence of a stagnant moist air environment in the stainless steel discharge line. A significant amount of tritium oxide hold-up in the discharge line was anticipated. To minimize any further releases to the environment, a Bubbler System was designed to remove and recover the tritium from the discharge line.This paper summarizes the results of several Bubbler recovery runs that were made over a period of a month. Approximately 3500 Ci of tritium oxide and 230 Ci of elemental tritium were removed and collected. The tritium contained in the water produced from the Bubbler system was later safely recovered in the station's downgraded D2O clean-up and recovery system.
