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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.
Stephen M. Bajorek
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 184 | Number 3 | November 2016 | Pages 305-311
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE16-21
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An understanding of thermal hydraulics, its basic phenomena, and its application to nuclear power plants is vital to safe as well as efficient design and operation. Thermal hydraulics for two-phase flow and heat transfer with nuclear applications has been studied for roughly 50 years, and the current body of knowledge is extensive. Yet, there remain safety issues, and the licensing of new light water reactor designs or new analysis methodologies is rarely simple. This is due to the state of the art in reactor thermal hydraulics as well as the perspective that the regulator, in this case the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), has toward that field of study.
This paper discusses the state of the art in nuclear thermal hydraulics, the regulator’s unique role and perspective, and a view of current challenges. The discussion is meant to point out how the regulator’s perspective has been shaped and hopefully provide some guidance on fulfilling research needs for future applications that may need NRC review.
