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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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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.
Gang Li
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 180 | Number 2 | June 2015 | Pages 154-171
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-87
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This investigation is to design a nonlinear pressurized water reactor (PWR) core load-following control system with self-stability for regulating the core power and axial power difference within a target band. A two-point–based nonlinear PWR core without boron and with a power rod and an axial offset rod is modeled. By proposing the gap metric of the core to qualify the core nonlinearity, the linearized multimodel single-variable core under case 1 (multivariable core under case 2) classified by two movable regions of the power rod is modeled. Linearized models of the core at seven power levels are chosen as local models of the core to substitute the nonlinear core model for each case. Based on H-infinity (H∞) control theories, the linear matrix inequalities method is adopted to design a H∞ output-feedback controller of every local model, which is a local controller of the nonlinear core of each case. In terms of the flexibility idea of control presented, the core load-following control system for each case is established. A theorem is deduced to analyze the global stability of the system of each case. Ultimately, simulation results show that the H∞ multimodel control strategy is effective for the core of each case.