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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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.
Masatoshi Iizuka, Masaaki Akagi, Takashi Omori
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 3 | March 2013 | Pages 507-525
Technical Papers | Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15807
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new treatment process was proposed for the anode residue from a molten salt electrorefining step in the pyrometallurgical reprocessing of spent metallic fast reactor fuel. This treatment process consists of two steps: (a) oxidation of the remaining actinides in the anode residue by the addition of CdCl2 and (b) removal of the accompanying chloride by high-temperature distillation. The oxidation of the remaining uranium by CdCl2 was studied using anode residue from previous electrorefining experiments using U-Zr alloys. The reaction between uranium and CdCl2 was completed in [approximately]2 days with a satisfactory chlorine balance among the species in the molten chlorides solvent. A high uranium oxidation rate was attained by appropriately controlling the rate of CdCl2 addition. The high-temperature distillation tests were carried out at 1473 K with pressure of [approximately]300 Pa to remove the solvent accompanying the anode residue. The chloride content in the anode residue was lowered to 1% to 2.5% by the distillation operation. Although the anode residue was heated to 1673 to 1773 K at a pressure of [approximately]50 kPa after the distillation, it was not melted completely. The remaining ratio of uranium after the electrorefining and the above treatment process was evaluated to be 0.04% to 0.20%. Material flow calculations were performed for a pyrometallurgical reprocessing facility equipped with the anode residue treatment process. It showed that (a) the chlorine and uranium supply/demand balance is maintained unless the remaining ratio of uranium after electrorefining exceeds a certain value and (b) the addition of the anode residue treatment process does not have an adverse effect on either the performance of the overall process or the facility design.