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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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.
William W. Simmons, Robert O. Godwin
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 1 | July 1983 | Pages 8-24
Overview | Nova | doi.org/10.13182/FST4-1-8
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Nova laser fusion research facility, currently under construction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), will provide researchers with powerful new tools for the study of nuclear weapons physics and inertial confinement fusion (ICF). The Nova laser system consists of ten large (74-cm-diam) beams, focused and aligned precisely so that their combined energy is brought to bear for a small fraction of a second on a tiny target containing thermonuclear fuel (deuterium and tritium). The ultimate goal of the LLNL ICF program is to produce fusion microexplosions that release several hundred times the energy that the laser delivers to the target. Such an achievement would make ICF attractive for military and civilian applications. The U.S. Department of Energy has approved construction of ten Nova laser beams, harmonic-conversion crystal arrays, and the associated laboratory buildings. By the mid 1980s, Nova will produce the extremes of heat and pressure required to explore the physical region of ignition of the thermonuclear fuel Additional developments in the area of high-efficiency drivers and reactor systems may make ICF attractive for commercial power production.
