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Conference Spotlight
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
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.
Yan Qizhen, Zhaochun Zhang, Guo Haibo, Wang Yang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 2 | February 2024 | Pages 178-195
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2213811
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tungsten/graphene composite was developed and demonstrated to have good mechanical and thermal properties. Density functional theory calculations were performed to investigate elastic constants, elastic anisotropies and isotropic elastic moduli, thermodynamic properties and minimum thermal conductivity of tungsten/graphene with and without a helium-vacancy pair, and tungsten/graphane and tungsten/ditungsten carbide (tungsten/W2C) composites. The results show that tungsten/graphene composite has more toughness when compared with pure tungsten metal. It is noticed that the minimum thermal conductivity of tungsten/graphene composite is higher, introducing a potential application in heat dissipation at high temperatures. We give an honest appraisal of the anisotropic and isotropic (polycrystalline) elastic properties of tungsten/graphene, tungsten/graphane, and tungsten/W2C carbide composites. In addition, the results show that the graphene layer is a strong trap for the He atom, while He affinity to the graphene layer is weaker to a single vacancy. The formation of the He-vacancy pair due to trapping effects near the W/graphene interface will help to reduce the concentration of impurities and defects in the tungsten matrix and maintain the inherent heat dissipation properties under irradiation.
