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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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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.
Young H. Lee, Alexander Austin, Brian K. Bairstow
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 8 | August 2020 | Pages 1240-1251
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1731403
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS) Program Mission Analysis Team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) requested a JPL Innovation Foundry Architecture Team (A-Team) study to assess mission pull for small RPS [1 to 40 W(electric)] and define the focus of future power system developments required to enable small RPS missions. The A-Team is JPL’s concurrent engineering design team for science definition and early mission concept development, targeting concept maturation levels of 1, 2, and 3. The requested small RPS study aimed to identify the architecture space of potential small RPS missions and suggest power levels that could enable or enhance potential future small spacecraft missions.
This technical note describes the collaborative engineering processes that the A-Team and Mission Analysis Team used to reach results quickly and presents the findings on power requirements for small RPS mission concepts.
