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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
Standards Program
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.
Graham Kennedy, Katrien Van Tichelen, Julio Pacio, Ivan Di Piazza, Heleen Uitslag-Doolaard
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 2 | February 2020 | Pages 179-190
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1620539
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In recent years, extensive thermal-hydraulic experimental tests have been performed on the lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE)–cooled, wire-wrapped fuel assembly (FA) of MYRRHA. These thermal-hydraulic tests were performed using FA mock-ups in large-scale LBE experimental test facilities at SCK•CEN (Belgium), ENEA (Italy), and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany). The FA pressure drop characteristics and flow-induced vibration (FIV) characteristics were tested with a full-scale 127-pin mock-up test section. The existing pressure drop correlations of Rehme and of Cheng and Todreas (simplified model) predict the experimental pressure drop data very well and are considered suitable for use in the design and safety analysis of the MYRRHA system. FIVs are very limited in the wire-wrapped bundle, and fuel pin fatigue damage from vibration during operation is not expected. Further analysis and testing are required to determine if damage from fretting corrosion could be expected.
Heat transfer characteristics of the FA were investigated experimentally in two separate 19-pin heated rod test sections cooled by LBE. The existing Kazimi-Carelli correlation predicts the global average Nusselt numbers very well, but the correlation is not developed to capture local hot spots. For the FA safety analysis, to further determine operational safety margins, a hot-spot factor is defined and analyzed to determine the hot-spot temperature penalty.
