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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.
J. F. Kunze, G. D. Pincock, R. E. Hyland
Nuclear Technology | Volume 6 | Number 2 | February 1969 | Pages 104-115
Technical Paper and Note | doi.org/10.13182/NT69-A28241
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The cavity reactor concept consists of a core, generally of dilute fuel, surrounded by a moderating reflector. This concept has long been considered as a means of attaining very high temperatures in a gaseous core, since the fuel need not be in contact with structural material. A number of critical experiments have been performed on configurations of different core size and shape, with different structural material thicknesses between the cavity and reflector, with different coolant densities surrounding the core, and with various other alterations. The principal purpose was to evaluate the effects of engineering design variables for a cavity propulsion reactor concept. Experiments reveal that a power reactor with the required structure and a cavity size 182.9 cm (6 ft) in diameter by 121.9 cm (4 ft) long can be expected to have a critical core loading of between 20 and 30 kg of 235U.
