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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.
Marat Margulis, Erez Gilad
Nuclear Technology | Volume 196 | Number 2 | November 2016 | Pages 377-395
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT16-23
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The application of best-estimate codes [coupled neutron kinetics (NK)/thermal hydraulics (TH)] for safety analyses of research reactors (RRs) has gained considerable momentum during the past decade. Application of these codes is largely facilitated by the high level of technological maturity and expertise that these codes allow as a safety technology in nuclear power plants, and it is largely driven by International Atomic Energy Agency activities. The present study belongs in this framework and presents the development and application of the coupled NK and TH code THERMO-T to the analysis of protected reactivity insertion accidents and loss-of-flow accidents in a typical RR with standard Materials Testing Reactor plate-type fuel elements. The coupling is realized by considering the neutronic reactivity feedbacks of the fuel and coolant temperatures and a heat generation model for the reactor power. The neutron flux in the reactor core is solved by applying point reactor kinetic equations and employing radial and axial power distributions calculated from a three-dimensional full-core model by the continuous-energy Monte Carlo reactor physics code Serpent. The evolution of temporal and spatial distributions of the fuel, cladding, and coolant temperatures is calculated for all fuel channels by using a finite volume time implicit numerical scheme for solving a three-conservation equation model. In this study, additional features, such as critical heat flux ratio prediction and decay heat model, are implemented for both highly enriched uranium and low-enriched uranium cores, and a comprehensive comparison of THERMO-T results is performed against other codes.