Hey everyone, so I’m a chemistry technician at a nuclear plant. The job involves a fair amount of monitoring water chemistry to ensure the chemistry is in spec to promote the formation of a passive corrosion layer on the pipes (nuke plants have a lot of metal interfacing with a lot of water, and the metal lasts a lot longer, and the plant is a lot safer under the right chemical conditions.) Additionally we’ll analyze for the concentrations of radionuclides to monitor for certain undesirable conditions (corrosion in primary systems, fuel cladding failure, and the like.) We handle the analysis and permitting of effluents (making sure we aren’t releasing high levels of radiation to the public.)
Now that all sounds really fancy and important. Functionally, we perform a lot of routine analyses, and our instruments handle the bulk of the hard work. The job isn’t particularly difficult or taxing. The running joke around the lab is that we’re overpaid pool boys. When everything is working with our instruments, and nothing is wrong with the plant, the job tends to be pretty boring. I work a rotating shift, so three weeks of days and two weeks of nights across a 5 week rotation, typically 12s. Because of the shift work and how boring the job can be, I’m actively trying to work my way into a new job within the same company. I interviewed for a PI analyst job last week, where I’d be tracking corrective actions to reported problems and ensuring that appropriate actions were taken as well as trending conditions to make sure that if a condition is a repeat offender, it gets appropriately escalated.