"I'm A Nuke": MIT’s Rising Generation of Nuclear Engineers

The phrase “young nuclear engineer” has been something of an oxymoron in recent decades, with the nuclear energy industry offering few openings for newcomers. Yet a new crop of nuclear engineers are coming out of MIT and videos themed, "I'm A Nuke," tell some of their stories.

Newly educated engineers are vital because the engineers who entered the field in the 1960s and 1970s are retiring, and climate change concerns are sparking renewed interest in the ability to generate continuous carbon-free energy. MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) has seen a surge in applications from a diverse, dynamic group of students, many of them with strong environmental orientations.

Last month, MIT hosted the recent American Nuclear Society 2013 Student Conference, with the theme, Public Image of the Nuclear Engineer. About 630 US and international students attended the event, which was co-chaired by NSE students Nathan Gibson, Ekaterina Paranomova ‘13, and Samuel Brinton. Publicity coordinator Jake Jurewicz ’14 said the timing, about two years after the Fukushima disaster, was opportune.

“People have had time to digest Fukushima and the lessons learned; we all sat in on talks about what went wrong and what can be done to improve plants and remedy what happened,” said Jurewicz.

More broadly, he added, the conference focused on innovation, new ideas, and cultivation of the new workforce. In addition to talks and technical sessions, activities included a large poster session showcasing attendee research, career and political workshops, a job fair, tours of MIT’s fission and fusion reactors, and a three-minute pitch contest.

Brinton, who is studying nuclear waste policy, captured some of the complexity faced by his generation, saying, “my mother was raised near Three Mile Island, and my dad was an anti-nuclear weapons activist, so I wanted to address the big problems that nuclear was facing….I want to apply a scientific solution to a political problem.”