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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
Standards Program
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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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.
D. D. Qu, W. W. Basuki, J. Gibmeier, R. Vaßen, J. Aktaa
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 3 | October 2015 | Pages 578-581
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-113
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reduced activation Ferritic/Martensitic (RAFM) steels, e.g. EUROFER are to be used as structural material for the First Wall (FW) of future fusion power plants. The interaction between plasma and FW, especially physical sputtering will limit the FW lifetime under normal operation. Therefore tungsten coating is selected to protect the FW due to its very low sputtering yield and low activation. However, the mismatch in thermo-physical properties between tungsten and EUROFER can lead to large residual thermal stresses and even failure. To overcome the issue of erosion a protective tungsten coating with a functionally graded (FG) tungsten/EUROFER layer (FG tungsten/EUROFER coating system) on EUROFER substrate will be developed and optimized.
Non-linear finite element simulations are performed to predict optimal parameters of the coating system. Thereby the potential of the FG-layer in reducing inelastic strains and improving lifetime is demonstrated, and the investigated thickness of FG-layer is suggested. Based on the simulation results samples are fabricated by vacuum plasma spraying (VPS) with three different thicknesses of FG-layer. The microstructural observations revealed that the coating system has fine gradation and variable thickness as designed, low porosity, as well as a sound interface. Berkovich and Vickers hardness identify basic properties of those layers.
