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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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.
B.-G. Brodda, D. Heinen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | August 1977 | Pages 420-427
Technical Paper | Chemical Processing | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31807
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The radiolytic load of the 30 vol% tributylphosphate-n-paraffin extractant to be used in the Jülich Pilot Plant for Thorium Element Reprocessing facility for reprocessing thorium high-temperature reactor (THTR) fuel elements with high burn-up values (85 000 MWd/MT of heavy-metal atoms) was calculated. At a radioactivity level of ∼2000 Ci/ℓ, the effective beta-particle power density of the feed solution ranges up to 15 W · ℓ−1. Most of the energy absorbed by the extractant is due to beta radiation (99%). About 1% originates from gamma radiation; contributions from alpha-particle emitters are negligible. The calculations consider the geometric parameters of the applied mixer-settler and the operational parameters of the flowsheet. The highest exposure expected will be ∼0.2 Wh · ℓ−1 · pass−1 when reprocessing fuel with 85 000 MWd/MT burnup after a cooling time of 100 days. For an easier comparison of the calculated value with other reported values, a coefficient is introduced describing the specific exposure of the extractant in terms of energy absorption per hour of passing through the contactor at a power density of 1 W· ℓ−1 in the feed solution. This coefficient is independent of such individual flowsheet conditions as heavy-metal concentration or power density in the feed solution. Comparison of calculated data with other reported data for THOREX and PUREX reprocessing runs exhibits only about a four-fold specific load of the extractant in case of reprocessing high-burned-up THTR fuel with respect to low-enriched low-burned-up light water reactor fuel. This underproportional increase is due to the specific fission-product spectrum of the investigated THTR fuel arising in the course of its reactor residence time.