Work in Fossil Plant or Nuclear Plant

[knight185]

I have been working in fossil power plants since I graduated from college in 2006 (mechanical engineering). Most of my work has involved troubleshooting rotating equipment and managing steam turbine overhaul projects. In the future I may have the opportunity to work in some nuclear plants and I wanted to find out some pros and cons. In my company most of the people strongly prefer fossil or nuclear. I am attracted to nuclear because those plants are very detailed about records, procedures, outage scheduling, etc. The fossil plants can be somewhat lazy in these areas and as a project manager/engineer, it can be frustrating because the culture has been around so long.

I know some of the nuke engineers who loved the work and others were nervous most of the time because of the high standards and "nuclear" atmosphere.

As a young engineer who intends to stay in the power industry, should I pursue nuclear experience or stick with fossil?

 

[ScottyUK]

Fossil plants as we know them will history soon enough.

Supercritical plants with carbon capture look much more likely to be a solution in the medium term. There's an irony that the massive gain in efficiency by going supercritical is swallowed up by the carbon capture equipment to render the overall efficiency of such a plant back where it would be with 1960's technology.


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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!

 

[racookpe1978]

If you really enjoy outage work (and not the valve-turning/run the control room experience), and have good fossil experience as a mech engineer (or electrical engineer for that matter), consider staying that field full time: Siemens (Turbine Services, Generator Services, and Piping) is looking for field service engineers.

Work would be equivalent hours to full time (or more), and has different jobs cross the board: Gas Turbine, welding, piping, machining and mechanical, steam turbines and equipment in both fossil and nuclear.

Note: You're rotating between jobs (US and overseas) and (by definition) are on the road. On-site, you're likely to be on 7x12 shifts, sometimes 6x10.

 

[knight185]

I am not likely to take on a field service job unless it pays a lot of money. Since I have a wife and child now I don't want to be on the road for most of the year, although my wife said she would be fine with it if I made more than enough money so we could buy a house and she would not have to work.

I see a lot of field service jobs online but all wanted field experience. Although I have outage experience as an engineer working for a utility, I would need additional training before taking on a job in the field.

 

[dcasto]

Because fossil fuels are fast and production oriented, the project managment templete from PMI doesn't work well.