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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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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.
N. Kishore Babu, Gopi Krishna C, K. Vamsi Krishna, Ateekh Ur Rehman, Prakash Srirangam
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 5 | July 2024 | Pages 702-714
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2232670
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The enhancement of mechanical properties in welds is heavily reliant on grain refinement. This study aims to investigate the impact of the addition of AZ61 filler and the impact of the absence of filler on the macrostructure and microstructure, as well as the mechanical properties, of Mg-Al-Zn alloy (AZ31) gas tungsten arc (GTA) welds. The AZ61 filler was employed to introduce a higher concentration of aluminum into the molten pool of AZ31 using the alternating-current GTA welding technique. It has been shown that the welds prepared with AZ61 filler had high strength and low ductility [yield strength (YS): 121 MPa, ultimate tensile strength (UTS): 226 MPa, and percent elongation (%El): 5] when compared with other welds made without filler (YS: 105 MPa, UTS: 164 MPa, and %El: 8), and the presence of the refined equiaxed grains and a significant volume fraction of second-phase Mg17Al12- β particles in the fusion zone (FZ) may explain this phenomenon. The results revealed that the average grain size of the weld decreased from 104 to 56 μm as the Al content in the weld metal increased from 2.7 wt% (without filler) to 4.5 wt% (with AZ61 filler). This grain refinement that was observed with the AZ61 filler may be attributed to the high growth restriction factor value caused by increased constitutional supercooling ahead of the solid-liquid interface.
