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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.
R.W. Conn, N.M. Ghoniem, S.P. Grotz, F. Najmabadi, K. Taghavi, M.Z. Youssef
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 615-622
Fusion System Studies | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22930
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
With the maturity of conceptual fusion reactor designs it is important to develop comprehensive scenarios for the startup and shutdown of fusion plants and to investigate physics and engineering requirements and design constraints and their implications. We then focus on the impact of such considerations on the operation of tandem mirror fusion reactors (TMR's). Brief examples from both the fission and conventional power industries are discussed. TMR plant operation is divided into an initial commissioning phase and four subsequent generic phases: (1) Phase IA: cold shutdown; (2) Phase IB: hot shutdown; (3) Phase II: system testing, plasma startup and standby power operation; (4) Phase III: staged power operation; and (5) Phase IV: rated power operation. Power ascention through these phases is explained in terms of the operation of two major systems: (1) the plasma technology and support system, and (2) the heat transport system. Physics and engineering constraints, subsystem interactions, and design implications are discussed throughout the paper using the Mirror Advanced Reactor Study (MARS) as the specific example.
