Students with a Bachelor of Science degree in Nuclear Engineering will find diverse career opportunities in government agencies at all levels, in national laboratories, in companies that design and sell medical equipment and nuclear steam supply systems, in engineering and construction firms, in consulting service companies, and in the electric utility industry and its associated organizations, such as the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations and the Electric Power Research Institute.

Graduate Study: Many of our Nuclear Engineering students continue to work for the Master's of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees. Advanced study allows students greater opportunities for teaching and research at universities and national laboratories.

Post Graduate Employment of Nuclear Engineering MS and PhD graduates Fall 99 - Fall 03 (40 total)

Post-graduate employment of Nuclear Engineering MS and PhD graduates -
F99 - F06 (86 total)

 

• Graduate school information, including fellowship information, is available in 4149 Etcheverry, posters are displayed outside 4105 Etcheverry.
• Seniors who want to apply to grad school-you should be signing up NOW for the GRE and investigating fellowship opportunities and deadlines.

Starting salaries are about $55,000 for college graduates, $60-65,000 for Master's students, $80,000 or higher for Ph.D.s for beginning research positions.

The nuclear energy and environmental field will continue to provide excellent employment opportunities for nuclear engineers. Geopolitical factors and environmental concerns have resulted in major changes in the patterns and costs of energy use, as well as social concerns which have required solutions for the disposition of nuclear materials. Price volatility for natural gas based electricity has increased the value of electricity from current plants, accelerating the trend toward obtaining 20-year licence extensions for older plants.

Current national concern for remediation and restoration of government sites, including military bases, nuclear weapons production sites, and other federal lands has led to new employment opportunities. The accelerating trend toward 20-year license extensions for existing nuclear power plants in the last two years has accelerated hiring by Utilities. In 1999 nuclear power generated more than 20 percent of this nation's electricity, and there are over 100 commercially operating power plants. The US nuclear power industry is massive, with capital investments in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and it comprises less than 25 percent of the present world nuclear power commitment. The need for nuclear engineers continues to grow and will remain strong.

A firm national policy on energy independence should result in further growth in this field in the early 2000. Introduction of advanced nuclear technologies throught the new "Generation IV" research initiative fusion research, fission will increase the professional manpower needs, as will issues related to safeguards and security, and medical applications.

The last three years have seen much happen for Nuclear Engineering.

Medical Applications
Nuclear processes have an amazingly diverse range of applications, perhaps the most important being in medicine, where over 1/3 of all procedures in the United States use nuclear techniques. Nuclear processes are used to provide images inside the human body, to detect and measure biochemical processes, and to provide therapy. A major event in 2000 was the FDA approval of the first Monte-Carlo code for use by doctors to design radiation therapy for cancer. Based on nuclear reactor design methods, this new tool now allows doctors to take detailed magnetic resonance imaging data (another nuclear technique) and predict with great accuracy how to deposit precisely enough radiation to kill cancer tumors without damaging surrounding tissue. Previous crude calculation methods often forced doctors to cause damage to substantial amounts of healthy tissue, or to miss completely killing tumors. Students in the bionuclear program in NE learn how the principles of engineering physics can be applied to imaging and therapy.

Fission Energy
The vision of fission energy is compelling. In the last two decades it has become the world's largest single source of emission-free energy, and it creates a waste stream sufficiently small and compact that we can conceive of isolating this waste permanently from the environment. For fission to provide more energy in the future, our grand challenge is to continue to improve the safety, economic performance, waste minimization, and proliferation resistance of fission power plants.

The U.S. has 103 nuclear power plants providing over 20 % of its electricity; worldwide the number is 433. These plants have helped stabilize electricity costs, particularly with the recent volatility of natural gas prices. Our nuclear plants reduce substantially the amount of carbon dioxide that world-wide electricity use releases to the atmosphere. Nuclear fission is the only non-fossil energy source that has been demonstrated at large scale, and that could be expanded substantially further. Nuclear's current contribution is sufficiently large that every year since 1999 the increases in the operating capacity of existing U.S. nuclear power plants from improving equipment reliability accounted for over half of all carbon-dioxide reductions reported by the U.S. electrical industry.

We now expect most existing U.S. nuclear plants to apply for 20-year license extensions , which means that the existing U.S. nuclear fleet will operate out past 2030. Many of our U.S. plants has been sold by regulated utilities to large owner-operator companies like Excelon and Entergy. Besides encouraging further improvements in reliability and safety, the large technical expertise and financial resources available to these new nuclear-focused companies provides the best possible conditions for new plant orders. Designing the next generation of fission plants is where some of our most interesting work is now, ranging from planning for light water reactors with new passive safety features, to gas-cooled reactors with extremely durable fuel, to lead-cooled reactors that can burn more waste than they generate.

Fusion Energy
The development of economic fusion energy systems is one of Nuclear Engineering's greatest grand challenges, since such power sources would fundamentally alter the way that humankind interacts with its environment, to the benefit of both humans and nature. In a well-designed fusion power plant, burning one ounce of fusion fuel, plentifully available, makes as much energy as burning 300 tons of coal while making a negligible amount of waste. Worldwide progress toward fusion has been steady and impressive. In the last decade, we have seen magnetic fusion experiments create over 13 million watts of fusion power. In the coming decade, we expect to see the new National Ignition Facility use inertial confinement to ignite fusion fuel, and for the first time reach the fusion conditions needed in an actual inertial fusion power plant.

UC Berkeley's Nuclear Engineering Department plays a leading role in advancing fusion technology, both toward advanced approaches to magnetic fusion using compact toroidal plasma configurations, as well as collaborations with Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories to develop inertial fusion systems that can operate at high repetition rates for power production.

Radioactive Waste Management
Another grand challenge problem that our graduates work on is developing systems for the safe and permanent disposal of radioactive waste. The most significant milestone in this field occurred recently with the opening of WIPP, the world's first geologic repository. Located 1/2 mile underground in a 250-million-year-old salt formation in New Mexico, WIPP began emplacing waste contaminated with radioactive transuranic elements in 1999. The Yucca Mountain Project is now working toward submission of a license application in December, 2004 to develop a repository for commercial spent fuel and high level waste from early U.S. military activities. Against this backdrop, extensive international research continues to improve models for the transport of radionuclides from geologic repositories, with active participation by the U.C. Berkeley, Nuclear Research Laboratory. The primary concern for repositories is the long-term potential for the contamination of groundwater in areas near the repository, making it unsuitable for use by future generations. Besides improving models for transport in natural systems, efforts also focus on improving the quality of the engineered barriers that contain the waste, so that multiple barriers can reduce further the probability of radionuclide release.

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