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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.
Georgeta Radulescu, Kaushik Banerjee, Robert A. Lefebvre, L. Paul Miller, John M. Scaglione
Nuclear Technology | Volume 199 | Number 3 | September 2017 | Pages 299-309
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1348800
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Used Nuclear Fuel-Storage, Transportation & Disposal Analysis Resource and Data System (UNF-ST&DARDS) methodology to perform automated containment analyses for potential transportation packages based on canister loading map information is described, and its capability is illustrated with example results. The allowable leakage rate is calculated with the procedures provided in ANSI N14.5-2014 and NUREG/CR-6487, which were adapted for containment analysis of a transportation package containing fuel assemblies with different nuclear characteristics (e.g., initial enrichment, burnup, and cooling time) and clad integrity (intact or damaged). UNF-ST&DARDS applies different source term calculation methodologies for low-burnup fuel (LBF) (i.e., <45 GWd/tonne U) assemblies and high-burnup fuel (HBF) (i.e., ≥45 GWd/tonne U) assemblies. The LBF radionuclide activities are based on actual fuel assembly burnup, initial enrichment, and cooling time. Bounding radionuclide activities based on a fuel pellet burnup value of 65 GWd/tonne U and actual fuel assembly cooling time are used for HBF assemblies. The fraction of failed fuel rods and the release fractions for the contributors to releasable source terms recommended in NUREG-1617 are used in the containment analysis regardless of fuel assembly burnup. However, UNF-ST&DARDS supports different parameter values for LBF and HBF assemblies. The containment analysis methodology for as-loaded transportation packages is presented in detail, and the UNF-ST&DARDS containment analysis capability is illustrated with results for simulated transportation packages containing spent nuclear fuel canisters in dry storage at selected sites.
