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7 years ago (10/02/04)
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1 month ago
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25 year-old male from College Station,TX,USA,Earth,Milky Way
Toiling away in the basement of the Zachry engineering building for 4+ years.
Nuclear Engineering grad student. | Latest Post | |
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Update time!
Hi All,
Long time no see. Just in case anyone wanted to know what has been going on in my life, here's what I've been doing the whole summer.
I have been interning at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) working at the Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in support of the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors Project (RERTR). It's been a pretty sweet experience all in all, I learned quite a few useful life lessons:
1. If you want to machine something that isn't a circle or a chamfered square, the cost, complexity and time to produce your part rises dramatically.
2. I now understand why it can cost tens of thousands of dollars to procure relatively simple items.
3. Nuclear technology in the DoE is completely boned.
4. I don't want to work for the DoE.
That last one shouldn't reflect at all on the people I worked with or what exactly I worked on, it's just that I recognize that I was extremely lucky to be placed to work where I was after seeing the status of all the other projects going on around me. As far as nuclear research goes, unless you are into modeling the hell out of everything and won't leave your computer desk, working with fissile material in a DoE facility is a costly and lengthy nightmare.
It's taking them far too long to catch up with the rest of the world that I fear by the time they break ground on the Next Generation Nuclear Plant the rest of the world will be on to bigger and better things.
Otherwise, the site itself is pretty cool. For those that don't know, back in the day INL was THE site in the USA for the research and development of nuclear reactor technology. Throughout its history, there have been 52 reactors built and operated there, and many of them were critical early on in setting the course of nuclear power plants. A lot of the experimental data generated from these reactors relating to materials performance and accident analysis is still important to this day since it is the only data of its kind ever made. So getting out and about to see all of these is like exploring the very foundations of my profession. I honestly wish I could say that the laboratory today evokes the same inspiration out of me, but sadly this is far from the case.
Out of those 52 reactors only 3 are still operating. Many of them were shutdown prematurely in the 90's, and many of those were permanently decommissioned. It's really heartbreaking because a lot of those reactors were truly unique creations, that had capabilities that simply aren't replicated in other reactors and still could have contributed significant contributions to nuclear science and engineering.
Anyway, I'm headed back to college station in two weeks. Maybe I'll be more active when I get back, I don't know.
Bye for now.
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| Awards | | | | The Goods | | | Name |
Jeffrey | | Occupation |
Nuclear Engineer Grad (Level Up!) | | Birthday |
August 12th, 1986 | | Interests |
Politics Science Nuclear Video Games Cooking | | GRYSOVCOB'S... | | | Groups |
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