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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.
L. J. Anastasia, P. G. Alfredson, M. J. Steindler
Nuclear Technology | Volume 7 | Number 5 | November 1969 | Pages 433-442
Chemical Process | doi.org/10.13182/NT69-A28446
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fluorination step in a fluidized-bed fluoride volatility process has been studied in a 2-in.-diam reactor using BrF5 and fluorine as fluorinating agents and sintered alumina as the fluidized bed. Fuel pellets containing UO2, PUO2, and nonradioactive fission product oxides were pulverized by oxidation before uranium was selectively fluorinated with dilute BrF5; plutonium was then fluorinated with concentrated recycled fluorine. Fission product elements added to the system simulated burnups of 10 000 and 30 000 MWd/ton. Several aspects of the fluoride volatility process are discussed: effect of variations in process parameters on residual plutonium in the bed, distribution of selected fission products and 106Ru tracer, demonstration of reduced plutonium losses by reuse of a single alumina bed to process three batches of pellets at each of the simulated burnups of 10 000 and 30 000 MWd/ton, plutonium inventory in the reactor, and sampling the fuel charge for material balance and accountability. A processing step for a hybrid process incorporating leaching of the fluidized bed with nitric acid after uranium fluorination with BrF5 was also demonstrated.
