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.
Akihiro Kitamura, Takashi Namekawa, Kousuke Hiramatsu, Yoshiyuki Sankai
Nuclear Technology | Volume 184 | Number 3 | December 2013 | Pages 310-319
Technical Paper | Robotic and Remote Systems / Human Factors | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A24988
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A remote control system to operate a manipulator arm by the HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) robot suit is examined in the application of in-cell equipment maintenance. In this integrated system the operator wears the exoskeletal-structured HAL and the operator's movement is transferred through HAL's computer system to a slave-type manipulator arm. The system includes a bioelectrical signals (BES) control scheme and a position control scheme. In the former scheme, sensors attached to the skin on the operator's arms detect faint BES when the operator makes a movement. The signals are processed and analyzed by a computer to determine the operator's intention. The computer then calculates the necessary assistive power and the power units generate adequate power to each joint of the HAL suit to assist the operator. To evaluate the effectiveness and usefulness of the system, remote handling experiments were designed using mockup equipment, and the performance of remote operation conducted by the two schemes mentioned above was compared with that by the more conventional three-dimensional mouse control scheme. Of these three control schemes, the BES control scheme clearly outperformed the others in executing direct-contact tasks of in-cell equipment maintenance with small operation time and small variation.
