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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.
Jin-Hwa Yang, Hwang Bae, Sung-Uk Ryu, Byong Guk Jeon, Sung-Jae Yi, Hyun-Sik Park
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 9 | September 2020 | Pages 1421-1435
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1775450
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Even for small modular reactors (SMRs) with all large pipes removed, a small-break loss-of-coolant accident (SBLOCA) is an important design-basis accident (DBA). Experimental simulation of the SBLOCA scenario is essential before a prototype reactor is realized. The system-integrated modular advanced reactor (SMART) is one of the SMRs developed by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute. An integral test loop, SMART-ITL, was also constructed to carry out several types of integral thermal-hydraulic effects tests for the prototype reactor. The SMART-ITL was designed with a preserved height, 1/7th diameter, and 1/49th area, and volume-scaling ratios. Two types of passive safety systems were equipped in the SMART-ITL: a passive safety injection system (PSIS) and a passive residual heat removal system (PRHRS). The PSIS was designed to refill the coolant in the reactor coolant system (RCS) for 72 h after an accident. Under accident conditions the PRHRS prevents overheating and overpressurization of the RCS using two-phase natural circulation. The SBLOCA on the passive safety injection line is a significant DBA that should be validated for differences in break size. In this paper, the effects of two different break sizes, 2 and 7/32 in., were analyzed in order to study the effect of the maximum and minimum mass and energy loss of the RCS. In order to simulate a clear difference between maximum and minimum mass and energy loss of the RCS, heat removal by the PRHRS was performed in the maximum break size (2-in.) accident, and heat removal by the PRHRS was not conducted in the minimum break size (7/32-in.) accident. The difference in mass and energy loss of the RCS will have a significant impact on the operation of the automatic depressurization system. Using the two extreme accident simulations, it was possible to confirm the difference in accident progression caused by the difference in break size and the characteristics of the PSIS.
