My Job.

Here is my promised job post. I guess I would agree with most of you when I say I love my job. Its very challenging yet very rewarding.

I'll start out with a visual: If you go to http://www.inpo.info/ and highlight the "Careers" button you can see me hard at work on the job (actually I wasn't hard at work, I was trying not to laugh in a staged photo shoot). Yup, thats me in my hard hat.

As you know, I am an engineer at a Nuclear Power Plant on a very beautiful lake (my absolute favorite part of the job might be our cafeteria overlooking the lake). My official title is Engineer II and my job is Thermal Performance Engineer/System Manager. I recently received my very first professional promotion (from Engineer III) so I am no longer entry level-yay!!

I work in the Systems Engineering Department in the Balance of Plant group. The plant is broken up into various systems, and each System Manager is responsible for their own systems. You walkdown and take data on your systems to spot adverse trends, you make sure the appropriate maintenance is being implemented on your pumps, valves, etc. so everything functions as expected, and you are generally considered the "expert" on your respective systems. I am in the Balance of Plant group of Systems which includes the secondary side of the plant (or everything that doesnt support the reactor). It includes the main turbines, main condensers, cooling water, etc. This relates very well to my other job, Thermal Performance Engineer.

Thermal Performance is taking the secondary side of the plant (i.e. Balance of Plant Systems) and making sure all systems as a whole are performing as efficiently as possible. In fact, we tend to refer to the reactor as a "big black box" and as long as it produces the steam the turbines need to spin I am happy. I am in the plant taking data regularly to make sure that we are producing the power we should be and we aren't losing efficiency anywhere. This is the part of my job I really love. In fact, I like thermo so much that I picked the focus of my MSME to be in Thermal Sciences. Other aspects of the thermal performance job include reporting a lot of data (mostly generation numbers) to corporate and our oversight agencies, determining lost generation every time we go down in power, making generation predictions to corporate so they have an idea of what we will be generating on a given day, and making recommendations to various people on maximizing plant generation. It is very fun and a very unique role that allows me to interact with much more important people I wouldnt normally have face time with as an engineer at this point in my career. I think its a great place to be and I am extremely lucky to have ended up in Systems. The biggest drawback to this department is that closest person to my age is over 15 years older than me (yes, that means no other people in the 20's or 30's). That means it can be a little lonely sometimes, and I definitely stand out at meetings. I guess it has ended up being an overall positive since I have been able to get great training from all the really experienced people in my group. Another drawback to this is I tend to get stuck with the jobs no one else wants (unless I am lucky and have we have an intern at the time).

I have an "unofficial" part to my job that has taken a lot of my time recently-I'll call myself Young Female Engineer PR Representative Extraordinaire. Since I am young and female I am a prime target for what the plant is trying to portray and attract in potential hires. Actually I am still trying to figure out how two years after I got hired I am still the youngest engineer. Fortunately the interns and some new hires started this week so I have some company! So with being young/female I have gotten to do the following to "promote" this fact:

• Recruiting interns and full time hires at job fairs
• Interacting with potential hires at recruiting dinners at the plant
• Recorded a radio commercial for the plant
• My picture is on the cover of a site-wide distribution
• My picture that is on that website will be on the cover of a nuclear magazine featuring an article on my plant (along with another picture in the article)
• I am co-hosting a morning radio show one day next month

None of this is engineering, but since I honestly enjoy my job and believe in the future of the industry I don't mind advertising that fact to anyone who will listen, along with trying to get other people to want to work at the plant.

So thats an overview of what I might be doing on any given day. I'll leave you with an encounter I had a few months ago that is pretty typical for me. I was walking by a group of contractors (who didn't know me because they weren't regular plant employees) and I overheard one of them saying to the group, "I thought you had to be 18 to work here."- ouch!