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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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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. Vamsi Krishna, Sriharitha Rowthu, Vijay N. Nadakuduru, Ganesh Pilla, N. Kishore Babu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 1 | January 2024 | Pages 68-81
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2182119
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Titanium alloys are extensively used in aerospace applications due to their high strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance, and outstanding mechanical performance. However, welding these alloys is difficult as they are highly reactive to environmental gases (O, N, and H) above 500°C. Aerospace structures require joints of high integrity to meet the design requirements. To this concern, gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) offers the potential to achieve welds of equal quality to electron beam welding or laser beam welding at much lower capital costs. The present study reports the influence of heat input on the evolution of microstructure and mechanical properties of Ti-15V-3Al-3Cr-3Sn (Ti-1533), a metastable beta titanium alloy welded by GTAW. The heat input can be controlled by different welding parameters like current, voltage, and welding speed. However, welding speed (15, 20, and 25 cm/min) is a crucial welding parameter that influences the cooling rate (product of thermal gradient and growth rate) and heat input. The microstructure of the fusion zone (FZ) consists of coarse columnar β grains, and coarse equiaxed β grains in the heat-affected zone, while the base metal comprises fine equiaxed β grains in all welding speeds. The average width of the FZ was found to decrease with an increase in welding speed due to lower heat input and higher cooling rate. The welds at 25 cm/min welding speed showed higher ultimate tensile strength (UTS) (654 ± 5 MPa) and hardness (240 HV) compared to 15 cm/min welding speed (UTS 593 ± 5 MPa; hardness 230 HV). The higher strength in the as-welded sample at 25 cm/min welding speed can be attributed to the lower columnar width of the β grains and the formation of equiaxed grains at the bottom portion of the weld zone. A similar trend was observed in samples subjected to the postweld heat treatment for all the weld speeds. Postweld aging of the welds prepared at 25 cm/min speed showed uniform α precipitates in the β matrix, as evidenced by transmission electron microscope results.