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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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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.
K. Böhnel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | September 1973 | Pages 199-201
Technical Paper | Analysis | doi.org/10.13182/NT73-A15882
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The assay of a light water reactor rod for its fissile uranium content can be accomplished by irradiating the rod in a water bath with neutrons from an antimony-beryllium source. The different slowing down properties of the moderator for neutrons of different energy cause a much stronger attenuation of the source neutron flux than of the flux originating from the induced fissions. At 25 cm from the source, the fission neutrons already contribute 20% to the signal measured by ordinary thermal-neutron detectors, allowing determination of their intensity as a measure of the fissile content of the rod. Laboratory experiments demonstrated that a 30-mCi source is sufficient to attain 1% precision in 1 min.
