• Question: What types of jobs would you do if you worked in a Nuclear Power Plant?

    Asked by anon-74500 on 13 May 2020.
    • Photo: Daniel O'Brien

      Daniel O'Brien answered on 13 May 2020:

      Nuclear power plants have lots of interesting and important jobs for people to do – most of them are to do with safety, which has to be the top priority because of the risks of working with radioactive materials.

      One job I know of is Reactor Operator – this person has overall control of the nuclear reactor, and has to know all the hundreds of dials and controls you see in a control room. It’s their job to monitor how the reactor is doing, and take action if something isn’t right (too much/too little power, unexpected changes in temperature or pressure). Most reactor control rooms are continuously occupied – there’s always someone watching (in shifts of course) for the many decades these stations operate for!

    • Photo: Stephen Jeapes

      Stephen Jeapes answered on 13 May 2020:

      I’m not too familiar with the field but I have spent some time working on a Nuclear site. I was a software/electronics test engineer. I was responsible for testing systems which measure radiation around the site.

      I know people who working in research designing the plants. They would need to design the process required to handle the fuel and produce the recycled fuel pellets.
      I’ve also worked with people designing the mechanical handling systems for fuel vessels in processing plants or designing the electrical system to run the plant and send the huge amounts of power generated to the national grid

      There’s a huge variety of careers available from Mechanical, Chemical Engineering, Electrical plus environmental monitoring
      This site might give you some idea of the range of roles: https://careers.sellafieldsite.co.uk/graduates-placements/graduates/programme-areas/

    • Photo: Rob Husband

      Rob Husband answered on 13 May 2020:

      My current role working on Rail Control systems which are SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems are used in a nuclear power station to monitor the running of the reactors and allow the operators control over the reactor. My role would be exactly the same as it is now, writing and test software but it would be in the context of nuclear power stations and keeping them operating safely.

    • Photo: Robert Wild

      Robert Wild answered on 13 May 2020:

      There are so many interesting jobs at Nuclear Plants. If we are specifically talking engineering their primary roles are taking care of the reactor and making sure it is maintained well and also planning any upgrades and major maintenance when the plant is in shutdown. This type of field is often known as system engineering and can be very multi disciplinary. You have responsibility for a system at the plant, for instance the cooling water and it is your responsibility to ensure that system performs its best and is well maintained and safe.It may not involve much designing something from scratch but it is essentially problem solving all day long working with aging reactors and equipment to keep them in top condition and safe.

    • Photo: Helen Taylor

      Helen Taylor answered on 13 May 2020:

      I’ve worked in s Nuclear plant during shutdown as a materials engineer. I had to go and inspect the pipework for cracks. I also had to polish metal and put plastic film on it the look at the microstructure.

    • Photo: Nicola Grahamslaw

      Nicola Grahamslaw answered on 20 May 2020:

      Hello! I used to be a nuclear engineer. To be honest there are lots of options!
      In my own job, I was a thermal analyst in a safety team. This meant I used computers to make simulations of the cooling inside the reactors, calculating how the gas flowing around would change the temperatures of the bits of hot metal the gas was flowing past. We would then use the results of these computer calculations to help decide what temperature limits were safe for various components, ie how hot should they be allowed to get? Then the components had temperature sensors so that we could keep an eye on things – the combination of the sensors and our calculations were used to prove whether the reactor was safe to keep running and generating electricity.
      Depending on your interests there would be other options, for example calculating how much fuel needs to go in based on nuclear physics, if you were interested in structures and materials there are some really interesting problems there you could work on, being part of the team that actually make the safety rules (so figuring out how to decide what the rules should be), the people actually at the stations operating them, the people designing new stations and new fuel, and much more.

    • Photo: David Linsell

      David Linsell answered on 21 May 2020:

      While the core of a nuclear plant is very specialised, its function is simply that of a controllable source of heat to turn water into steam. The steam can then be used to drive a steam turbine, which will then turn an electrical alternator. The core generates heat by allowing a controlled amount of fission (splitting) of nuclear particles. The amount of fission allowed to take place is controlled by inserting or removing a set of control rods. The reactor core is encased in water which is heated up. Water is circulated around the reactor, on to a heat exchanger and back to the reactor. This is the Primary Circuit. A second circuit, the Secondary Circuit, passes a separate stream of water through the heat exchanger where the secondary water is changed into steam for use in the steam turbine. Steam exhausting from the turbine is condensed back to water ready to enter the heat exchanger again. In engineering terms there is a requirement for nuclear engineers and physics specialists but much of the work in a nuclear power station is like any other power station: Mechanical Engineering, for pipes, pumps and valves; Electrical Engineering at all voltages, 24 volts (V) or less for control circuits, 400V form small pumps and fans, 11kV for large motors, 11-66kV for the alternators, up to 400kV for connecting the generated electricity into the National Grid distribution system; Control Engineering, for maintain the myriad of bits of information that are required to monitor performance of the station and to control the performance. Everyone must understand the critical importance of the work that they do. Safety, Quality and thorough documentation of every activity undertaken are vitally important.

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