Nuclear Engineer: A Manly (?) Kind of Job

It is no secret that energy is the life blood of this country. Energy holds the key to the environment, the economy, and national security. My career in nuclear is more than just a paycheck to me. Every night when I go to sleep, I rest easy knowing I am doing my part.

That comes from Jack Gamble, writing at the Art of Manliness blog. He’s a systems engineer, or more specifically, a control rod drive system manager. He doesn’t say at which plant he works, which raises a concern, but his piece is utterly benign (plus he has his own blog, Babeled, which covers nuclear subjects.) The aim is in the title of the post, So You Want My Job, and Gamble does a good turn describing opportunities in the nuclear industry. And there are a lot of those:

There are opportunities galore in the nuclear industry right now. These days are referred to as “The Nuclear Renaissance” due to the rekindled interest in nuclear as an alternative to fossil fuels (known to us as “Dirt Burners”). There are plans in place to build new nuclear power plants all over the country. Also, it is estimated that as much as 40% of the current nuclear workforce will retire in the next 5-10 years. This of course means there are plenty of jobs in nuclear available (for both blue and white collar workers). [Gamble considers himself blue collar.]

Pays well, too, we hear.

He offers observations obvious to us, but not to everyone:

Usually the first thing people ask me is something like “isn’t that dangerous?” or “aren’t you scared of radiation?” Truth be told, in one year’s time I will receive less radiation working at a nuclear plant than a US Congressmen receives in the US Capitol Building.

Which is true. And how did he get his job?

Believe it or not, I landed this job by applying through Monster.com.

Now, we’re not endorsing Monster.com over any other service, but it suggests that the industry is casting a pretty wide net, which is all to the good.

Read the whole thing. The Art of Manliness blog is actually a lot more interesting than you would first guess – much more Best Life than Maxim in approach – perhaps a bit quirky in its seeming desire to revive a masculine style embodied by Mad Men.

One thing we know for sure: jobs are jobs, and plenty of women do this kind of work.

Jack Gamble himself. Visit his blog and take a look around. He covers a lot of the same topics we do, but from the perspective of a plant worker.

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog