ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
October 2025
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.
Wade Marcum, Daniel LaBrier, Emory Brown, Yikuan Yan, Nicolas Woolstenhulme
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 6 | June 2020 | Pages 895-910
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1720559
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In 2017 the Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) Facility was restarted after having been placed in a standby state in 1994. The TREAT reactor’s restart has since enabled the progressive development of new nuclear technologies within the United States that previously were outsourced to other countries. While the reactor’s restart was a large feat worthy of recognition, the experimental use of its characteristics has required further development of an in-pile experimental infrastructure sufficient to support programmatic needs. This hardware has taken the form of capsule designs (compact and elongated) as well as loop concepts representing the phenomena of interest for a subset of the separate effects tests desired for each respective testing campaign. The transient testing program has been a large integrated effort that aligns with the U.S. Department of Energy’s current needs. This study complements those programmatic elements by developing, fabricating, and demonstrating a full-scale flowing water loop in an out-of-pile environment. The goal of this effort is to develop a pragmatic understanding of the engineering capabilities and limitations associated with geometric form factors, metering technology, and controls logic under the representative thermal-hydraulic conditions that would be experienced within the TREAT reactor during an in-pile reactivity-initiated accident test. The outcomes of this study result in an evaluation of the conceptual design of a comprehensive flowing water loop, including objective figures of merit for comparing unique instrumentation and the basis for their selection during operations. These efforts directly contribute to and are required for the further advancement of transient testing capabilities within the United States.