Nuclear Engineer

You design, operate, or maintain nuclear reactors and systems that produce enormous amounts of energy by splitting atoms — which is either humanity's greatest achievement or its biggest risk depending on who you ask. You'll work with radiation, reactor physics, and safety systems that have redundancies on their redundancies. The margin for error is essentially zero, and the regulatory environment reflects that.

Learn the skills

Courses and certifications to get you job-ready

What you'll actually do

• 01Monitor reactor operations and ensure every parameter stays within limits that exist for extremely good reasons
• 02Perform neutronics calculations and reactor physics analyses that determine how the core behaves
• 03Design and evaluate safety systems with layers of redundancy because failure isn't an option — it's a catastrophe
• 04Manage radioactive materials with protocols that are stricter than anything you've encountered in any other engineering discipline
• 05Write and review safety analyses and NRC documentation that could fill a small library
• 06Participate in emergency preparedness drills that you hope will never be needed but train for like your life depends on them