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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.
Sunil D. Weerakkody, Warren F. Witzig
Nuclear Technology | Volume 78 | Number 1 | July 1987 | Pages 43-53
Technical Paper | Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT87-A34007
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A statistical decision theory provides a rational theoretical model that enables an algorithm to select appropriate off-site protective actions. Existing knowledge on safety system and containment event trees, the spectrum of release states, and statistical decision theory were used to develop a model that accommodates actual and potential radiation risks and nonradiological risks such as risks of evacuation in selecting off-site protective actions. The usefulness of the model developed is illustrated by applying it to the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) scenario and comparing the actual decisions made with the decisions provided by the model. Conclusions drawn by modeling the TMI-2 related data are in general agreement with off-site protective actions taken. Finally, the model is used to illustrate the extremely low likelihood of the occurrence of accident scenarios that require evacuations beyond a 3.2-km radius and to support a plume exposure pathway emergency planning zone of 3.2 to 8 km for reduced source terms.
