The Complete Guide to Becoming A Nuclear Technician

Chapter 1: What Does a Nuclear Technician Actually Do?

Let's get one thing out of the way immediately: a Nuclear Technician is not a nuclear engineer, and it's not a reactor operator. You are not the person in The Simpsons, and you're not the person designing the next generation of power plants. You are the person who makes sure the plant actually runs safely, day in and day out, by performing thousands of small, precise, and deeply important tasks. If the engineers are the architects, you are the general contractor who makes sure the building doesn't fall down.

So what does a typical day actually look like? Let's start with the environment, because that shapes everything else. Most Nuclear Technicians work in one of two main settings: a commercial nuclear power plant, or a research facility, medical center, or government laboratory. The power plant environment is the most common, and it's the one we'll spend the most time on here, but the skills are transferable. In a power plant, you'll spend your time in a combination of areas: the control room (though rarely as the operator), the auxiliary buildings that house the cooling systems and pumps, the turbine hall, and, on certain occasions, the containment building itself — the massive dome structure that houses the reactor.

Here is the first thing that surprises most people: you will not actually spend that much time standing next to the reactor. In fact, a large portion of your job is conducted in areas