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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.
R. P. Gardner, K. Verghese, J. I. Cehn
Nuclear Technology | Volume 16 | Number 2 | November 1972 | Pages 418-429
Technical Paper | Radioisotope | doi.org/10.13182/NT72-A31207
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A mathematical model is developed for predicting the spectra of alpha particles of distributed energy emitted at a point, transmitted through gas mixtures, and detected by a circular detector. Circular sources located coaxially with the detector are also treated. Experimental results verify the accuracy of the model. Possible applications of the model include the calibration and optimum design of all transmission-type alpha-particle gauges for specific measurements such as atmospheric densitometers. A new gauging principle based on the alpha particle stopping power is also identified and preliminary experiments indicate its feasibility. This principle consists of using a nonlinear search on the amounts of gaseous components present to obtain the best fit between experimental and calculated alpha-particle spectra. If the stopping powers at the different alpha-particle energies are different for all components, then, in principle, one can analyze for the amounts of each component. Potential application of this principle to measurements of density (free of composition interferences) and gas composition of planetary atmospheres is discussed.
