ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
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.
Koroush Shirvan, Mujid Kazimi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 184 | Number 3 | December 2013 | Pages 274-286
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A24985
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An optimization search over all design parameters yields a boiling water reactor (BWR) with high power density (BWR-HD) at a power level of 5000 MW(thermal), equivalent to a 26% uprated Advanced BWR (ABWR), the latest version of operating BWR. This results in economic benefits, estimated to be [approximately]20% capital and operation and maintenance costs and similar total fuel cycle cost per unit electricity. A safety analysis of the BWR-HD was performed and compared with that of the ABWR. It covered a range of transients, involving a decrease in reactor coolant inventory or coolant system flow rate, changes in coolant temperature along with increase in reactor pressure, and a reactivity-initiated transient. The BWR-HD's different core flow velocity, feedwater flow rate, core inlet temperature, void coefficient of reactivity, pressure drop, core fuel loading, and volume of fluid in the core resulted in very different response to transients. In general, the 1.3-m-shorter core results in faster scram times and lower total positive reactivity insertions during the transients, which improves the BWR-HD's performance compared to that of the ABWR. The core remains covered and the pressure in the reactor pressure vessel never rises above the licensing limits during any of the simulated transients. The change in minimum critical power ratio for the BWR-HD was smaller than or equal to that of the reference ABWR in all of the six simulated transients. For the loss-of-coolant-inventory accidents and severe accidents, the BWR-HD qualitative performance was judged to be acceptable and could result in an improved response with the lower fuel and zirconium loading.