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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.
E. W. Sucov, F. S. Malick, L. Green
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1084-1088
Blanket and First Wall Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A23002
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fluidized bed concept for blankets of dry or wetted first wall ICF reactors using solid lithium compounds is described. The reaction chamber is a right cylinder, 32 m high and 20 m in diameter; the blanket is composed of 36 steel tanks, 32m high, which carry the sintered Li2O particles in the fluidizing helium gas. Each tank has a radial thickness of 2 m which generates a tritium breeding ratio (TBR) of 1.27 and absorbs over 98% of the neutron energy; reducing the thickness to 1.2 m produces a TBR of 1.2 and energy absorption of 97% which satisfy the design goals. Calculations of tritium diffusion through the grains and heat removal from the grains showed that neither could be removed by the carrier gas; tritium and heat are therefore removed by removing the grains continuously. The particles are continuously fed into the bottom of the tanks at 300°C and removed at the top at 475°C. Tritium and heat extraction are easily and conveniently done outside the reactor. Compared to blanket designs which use flowing liquid metals or packed beds of solid lithium compounds, this concept is safer, simpler, cheaper, easier to maintain and less likely to break down. In addition, this concept is compatible with both wetted wall and dry wall first wall designs. Finally, deleterious thermal expansion effects due to absorption of the neutron pulse in liquid lithium or the packed bed disappear because of the decoupling of the particles in the helium stream.