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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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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.
H. S. Levine, E. J. Nowak
Nuclear Technology | Volume 36 | Number 1 | November 1977 | Pages 106-119
Radiation Environments in Nuclear Reactor Power Plant | Chemical Processing | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31964
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new method for management of waste Zircaloy fuel hulls is proposed as an alternative to compaction and burial. It involves using the waste as a feedstock in a chemical process for preparing inorganic zirconate ion exchange material. Enough zirconate could be prepared from the waste hulls to stabilize all the high-level liquid waste generated in light water reactor fuel reprocessing, and in this way the two waste streams would be combined. The proposed conversion operation would involve chlorination of the Zircaloy waste with NH4Cl and distillation of volatile chlorides, reaction of the distillate with isopropyl alcohol to form intermediate alkoxides, and hydrolysis of the intermediate to form the zirconate. The conversion would be accomplished with recycle of all reagents so that no new major waste stream would be created. The chemical basis for the conversion process, simplified process flowsheets, and an analysis of the various options illustrate the feasibility of the full-scale process. A preliminary economic study was made that indicated that the full-scale operation should be technically and economically feasible.
