The march of time, nuclear wise

By Peter Caracappa

I teach students of engineering. Many of them (although certainly not all) prefer logarithms to literature and algebra to anthropology. No doubt they get a fair share of that in my classes, but I try to include a bit of history whenever I can.

My students all know that matter is made up of atoms. They know that those atoms are made up of electrons that are orbiting around a central nucleus, which itself is a mixture of protons and neutrons. “When did you first learn these concepts—the nucleus, protons, and neutrons?” I like to ask. For many, it was elementary school, or possibly early in middle school. Regardless, it is clearly something that we teach to children, and it is perceived as an “obvious” fact of nature.

Then I point out that 100 hundred years ago, these theories simply did not exist that today we consider so fundamental to our understanding of the nature of matter. One hundred years ago, there were airplanes, automobiles, and electric lights, but no such concept as the nucleus.

Rutherford

In fact, it will be 100 hundred years ago this May that Ernest Rutherford published a paper in Philosophical Magazine positing the idea that atoms consist of a dense nucleus surrounded by electrons (Rutherford E. [1911]. “The Scattering of α and β Particles by Matter and the Structure of the Atom”. Philosophical Magazine, Series 6 21: 669-688).  I think this is a centennial worth celebrating!

Okay, so maybe some will peg the 100th anniversary to the gold foil experiments performed by Rutherford’s students Geiger and Marsden in 1909 .  So be it—there are plenty more anniversaries to come:  it wasn’t until 1913 that Bohr put forth his theory of orbiting electrons, and it was all the way to 1932 before Chadwick demonstrated the existence of that last puzzle piece that made the entire field of nuclear engineering possible, the neutron (although a neutral nuclear particle was postulated by Rutherford himself in 1920).

In today’s world, the pace of technological innovation should come as a surprise to no one. And yet, it is easy to forget just how “young” the fundamental knowledge is that we rely on as the building blocks of our industry. If nothing else, it should give us an appreciation for the potential for the discoveries made today, and just how quickly they could change everything.

Caracappa

Peter Caracappa is a clinical assistant professor and radiation safety officer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in New York State. He was a founding executive committee member of the Young Members Group and currently serves as its chair. He is a contributor to the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

Chernobyl and nuclear knowledge transfer

By Peter Caracappa

At a session on educational programs during a recent ANS meeting, a fairly new graduate student in nuclear engineering described a nuclear survey course that he had taken at his university. The graduate student had not studied nuclear engineering as an undergrad, and when he said, “I had never really heard of Chernobyl before I took this course,” you could almost hear an audible gasp among the more, well, mature members of the audience.

Chernobyl-4 reactor after the accident (center), its turbine building (lower left), and Chenobyl-3 (center right).

This year—2011—marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, which occurred on April 26, 1986, at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine  (then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union). While I am certain that there will be plenty of coverage of the event a few months from now, the anniversary serves as a reminder of just how long ago it was, and how many of the younger members of the nuclear industry were not alive or were not aware of the accident and simply have no real knowledge of it.

In full disclosure, I myself was not quite 10 years old at the time, but like the Challenger space shuttle accident that same year, Chernobyl and its aftermath were an impacting memory.

When a generation shares a major event, it can be easy to never realize that later generations have limited knowledge of the event, if any knowledge at all. It is not the technical lessons of the accident that we have to worry about losing. These lessons become part of the fabric of our educational programs, and they are built into the training, policies, and procedures throughout the industry. What we can’t replicate, however, is the emotional impact of the event. Young engineers may be able to give 20 reasons why an accident like happened at Chernobyl can never occur in the United States, but does that mean that they can frame the answers in a way that addresses the fears of their audience?

When we talk about knowledge transfer from one generation to another, we are usually talking about the technical knowledge. Even absent a strong program in that area, technical history does become part of our education, formally or informally. We learn about how regulations have changed over time, or we redo some calculations based upon a new set of standards, or we absorb some of the “war stories” from more experienced people around us. We don’t want to miss the important details, which is why knowledge management programs are so important. Whichever side of the conversation we find ourselves on, we should not forget to talk about those things—such as the emotional impact—that engineers sometimes have a more difficult time putting into words.

____________________

Caracappa

Peter Caracappa is a clinical assistant professor and radiation safety officer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in New York State. He was a founding executive committee member of the Young Members Group and currently serves as its chair. He is a contributor to the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

Nuclear engineering, going forward

By Peter Caracappa

What does it mean to be a nuclear engineer? That question is not as
easy to answer as it once was.

Looking back on the field of nuclear engineering education in the past 20 years or so, some very interesting changes have taken place. In many ways, nuclear engineering is still a niche program. Compared with the “big boys” such as mechanical and electrical engineering (with hundreds of programs available), there are relatively few nuclear engineering programs – only about 30 – across the United States. Even at its height, there were no more than 50 programs. Many of them closed down as enrollments collapsed through the 1990s, and new programs have only very slowly begun to be added in recent years.

More importantly, there has been a shift in what it means to study nuclear engineering. What happened is that nuclear engineering began to take its  place – and I would say its rightful place – as one of the major fields of engineering.

Gas-cooled fast reactor schematic

The traditional view of nuclear engineering is the study of getting power from nuclear fission. There is plenty of interesting work to be done within this definition. With new reactors being built and Generation IV reactors being designed, there is a significant need for students in this area. But when nuclear engineering departments were struggling, many of them broadened their focus out of necessity more than anything else. They began to think of nuclear engineering as any application of nuclear and atomic interactions. Thinking of it this way, there are many more diverse applications in the field, such as homeland security, medical imaging, and plasma physics.

Considering the history of the different branches of engineering, they
all followed roughly the same pattern. They started out as a fairly
narrow field of study, and matured into a much more general and diverse
field. For example, when the first students began to study mechanical engineering, they all learned how to design steam engines and the things to do with them. Electrical engineering was largely the study of generators and motors. Chemical engineers worked mostly on the things that could be made from petroleum. Clearly, these fields are no longer thought of as narrowly as
that.

Atomic scientists, 20th anniversary reunion, 1962. They all participated with Enrico Fermi in the December 2, 1942, Chicago Pile-1 experiment. (Photo: University of Chicago archives)

What will these departments do now that enrollments are increasing and new construction is beginning? Some may choose to return to traditional definitions of nuclear engineering – to be a niche program feeding the nuclear power industry. The broader applications of nuclear science and technology, however, are only going to become more important. If the idea persists that being a “nuclear engineer” is about more than just fission reactors, nuclear engineering programs may just be as common as mechanical or electrical engineering programs.

With a population of graduates well trained in the applications of atomic and nuclear physics – think of the possibilities!

Caracappa

Peter Caracappa is a clinical assistant professor and radiation safety officer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in New York State. He was a founding executive committee member of the Young Members Group and currently serves as its chair. He is a contributor to the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

We always knew nuclear was green!

By Jennifer Varnedoe and Liz McAndrew-Benavides

This year’s North American – Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) continental conference was held in May and was themed “Leading the Change: Go Green.” Participants learned that the future of electricity production in the United States would be heavily influenced by the desire to combat global warming. This desire is starting a national debate on how the country should select technologies for new electricity production facilities.

The common consensus is that only technologies deemed to be green have a chance at new construction, so Young Generation conference attendees were disheartened that nuclear was not recognized as a green energy. Until the environmental benefits of nuclear energy were recognized, new nuclear power would have a difficult time moving forward.

As of the end of September, there isn’t any reason for the young generation of nuclear professionals to be disheartened. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently published a definition of “Green Jobs” that is inclusive of nuclear careers.

BLS has defined green jobs as:

1. Jobs in businesses that produce goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources.
2. Jobs in which workers’ duties involve making their establishment’s production processes more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources.

Easily missed because the BLS definition is generic, the great discovery is made when reviewing the list of job codes associated with the definition. Four nuclear jobs are included in the BLS definition:

• turbine manufacturing
• nuclear electric power generation
• nuclear waste disposal
• industrial valve manufacturing

Being included in this definition will allow nuclear power to have an equal seat at the table at any future federal discussion on energy generation. State public service commissions will be able to point to the federal definition of green jobs to count electricity produced by nuclear power toward their clean energy standards. Most importantly, the young generation of nuclear professionals can rest assured that the federal government understands the importance of nuclear power in the global warming debate.

As members of the young generation, we applaud the Department of Labor’s work to clarify once and for all, what is a green job.

Jennifer Varnedoe is Vice-Chair of the ANS Young Members Group.  She is a Project Engineer with Advanced Programs at GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy.  She has been an ANS member since 2007 and is a guest contributor to the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

Liz McAndrew-Benavides is President of NA-YGN.  She is Managerof Industry Infrastructure at the Nuclear Energy Institute. In this role she is focused on work force development and supply chain issues for the nuclear industry. Prior to this job, she worked for Constellation Energy in their new nuclear division, UniStar Nuclear.

Find ANS’s Young Members Group in Las Vegas

By Peter Caracappa

Fall is in the air! The temperatures are cool–the leaves are turning–and (after a childhood filled with repeated disappointment and utter futility) I get to watch my Philadelphia Phillies make their mark on another MLB post-season.

And, of course, it means that it is almost time for the next national meeting of the American Nuclear Society, scheduled for November 7-11,  2010, at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, Nev.

I look forward to ANS’s semi-annual national meetings, as they provide an opportunity to tune in to some of the cutting-edge technical content and hottest topics in the nuclear industry, and give the technical divisions a chance to touch base, regroup, and plan for the future. These meetings are tremendously valuable, but the expectation that someone would be able to attend every meeting is no longer realistic, especially for the
younger members of the industry. As the Young Members Group relies on
these very same people to function, we need to ensure that attending national meetings is not an impediment to their involvement. Sometimes we are more successful than at other times, but we continue to try to find ways to promote the young members’ involvement between and around the national meetings.

That being said, the YMG does have its formal gatherings during the ANS national meetings.  In Las Vegas, the YMG Executive Committee is meeting on Monday, November 8,  over lunch (11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.).  The meeting is open to everyone–I promise we don’t bite! We will be setting the direction for our committees and for the YMG as a whole for the coming months, so if you have been interested in getting involved and not sure where to start, this is the place to be. Of course, attendance at the meeting is not a requirement–anyone who cannot be there should drop me a line ahead of the meeting (click here), and we will be happy to slot you into our plans going forward.

As part of a robust technical program at the national meeting, the YMG is also co-sponsoring a tutorial on the Mortiz code on Thursday morning, November 11, in conjunction with the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division.  Come by to learn a little about this very useful tool.

I’ll be looking for you in Vegas!

Click here for more information on the 2010 ANS Winter Meeting and Nuclear Technology Expo.

Caracappa

Peter Caracappa is a clinical assistant professor and radiation safety officer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in New York State. He was a founding executive committee member of the Young Members Group and currently serves as its chair. He is a contributor to the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

ANS Young Members Group evolves to meet challenges

By Peter Caracappa

It is sometimes a little hard for me to believe, but I have been involved in nuclear engineering education for more than 16 years. For many of those years, I was a student, climbing my way up to achieve a doctorate in nuclear engineering. Now I am an educator, which in many ways is just a different kind of student.

I often find myself standing in front of groups of students who are either considering the study of nuclear engineering or are completely undecided about the field they want to study, and I quickly fall into what has become a habitual promotion—the value of a nuclear engineering education. I draw a trend line of nuclear engineering enrollments, which shows enrollments topping 2000 students per year through the 1980s, plummeting through the 1990s to bottom out below 500 students a year, and then recovering to around 1500 students a year today. Then I point to the bottom of the trough in the graph and say, “This point here, this is when I got my degree. It makes me either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid. I’m not always sure which.”

Click on Chart to Enlarge

It gets a laugh (which is my primary goal) and the turnaround in enrollments suggests a confidence in the future prospects for the profession of nuclear engineering. It says that there is a demand for nuclear engineering graduates, and that their place in the workforce is as secure as can reasonably be predicted. Jobs are available and salaries are good. For most students, they don’t need to know any more.

But looking a little harder at that trend line illustrates another truth about the field that they plan to enter: my “generation,” the thirty-something “incredibly smart or incredibly stupid” members of the nuclear industry, are virtually absent from the workforce.

Does this matter? I think it does. Finding your way in the workplace, learning the ropes, taking on responsibility, and advancing your career are challenging under the best of circumstances. But when such a demographic chasm exists between younger workers and those who are more experienced, those incremental opportunities for responsibility and advancement become harder to come by. The transitions through one’s career appear rougher, and jumps in responsibility are steeper. These obstacles can be overcome, as in fact we have little choice but to do so, but it is a different kind of toolbox that we may have to develop as compared with our predecessors.

These challenges are not limited to the commercial workforce, either. The same phenomena are present in regulatory agencies, national labs, and professional organizations such as the American Nuclear Society. It was these sorts of challenges that motivated the formation of the Young Members Group within  ANS about five years ago, and it drives the Group’s activities today.

The Young Members Group of ANS has two primary goals: to give support to the new professional members and provide them opportunities to develop into the future leaders of ANS, and to advocate for the changes in ANS that will allow it to be successful in its service to the membership (and nuclear workforce) of tomorrow. The Group consists of all of the members of the Society who have not yet reached the age of 36, or have completed their education within the past five years, as well as any members with a professional interest in the challenges faced by this group. As this Group works to secure the future of ANS, we also hope that its lessons will spill over to the industry as a whole.

Even as the Young Members Group seeks to be an agent of change, we face our own needs to change. The demographics of the Group are shifting as more and more new graduates enter the industry. The evolution of technology is changing the way that we interact with one another personally and professionally, the speed nature of communication, and the storage and retention of knowledge. All of this is happening within the context of global changes in economy, environment, and politics.

The one constant that we can count on is change. The enrollment trend that resulted in this demographic void is unlikely to reoccur (although the future holds no guarantees), but the need to support and understand the newest members of the nuclear workforce is permanent. The Young Members Group of ANS is one small part of this greater picture.

For my students, the ones who are still considering a future in nuclear engineering, the prospects are indeed bright. It is up to all of us to make sure that the nuclear workforce they enter will be welcoming and conducive to their success.

If we do, then there is little doubt that 16 years or so from now, those students will look back at their decision to study nuclear engineering as one that is clearly “incredibly smart.”

Peter Caracappa

Peter Caracappa is a Clinical Assistant Professor and Radiation Safety Officer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He was a founding executive committee member of the Young Members Group and currently serves as its chair.