NUCLEAR CAREER PREPARATIONS

Career Highlights

Periodically, we will share the career path and advice of nuclear professionals who have lived and worked in Mississippi. Here's our first one coming from an upcoming book to be published by ANS on career paths entitled "The Nuclear Empowered Workforce"!

"My entry into a nuclear licensing role was a progression from a seemingly unrelated professional position of health physicist with in-depth training as a nuclear station operator. However, that background and training helped develop my ability as a generalist. That is, knowing a little bit about a lot of things, but not enough to be an expert at any of them. In my opinion, the key to success as a licensing professional is the ability to combine engineering knowledge, nuclear station experience, communication skills (i.e., both verbal and written), and a healthy interest in the regulatory process to understand technical and regulatory issues, help guide the engineering experts as they develop solutions for those issues, and then communicate the solutions to the regulator. The main attraction for me as a licensing engineer is that there is no typical day. On any Monday morning, I may have a list of the projects and issues that I may need to tackle that week – such as working with engineers to develop license amendment requests or ASME Code relief requests. However, unanticipated and urgent events at one or more of the Entergy nuclear stations may redirect my efforts. 

"Although the licensing projects and 'fire-fighting' of emergent issues are both important and gratifying, a licensing professional's most important responsibility is to maintain their role as the "regulatory conscience" of the organization. Simply put, it is my job to help ensure that all of our stations comply with both the spirit and the words of the regulations and regulatory guidance, in both what we do – how we operate the plants, and what we communicate to the regulator – both verbal and written." 

-John Schrage, Entergy Senior Staff Engineer, Licensing, Retired

Careers