Nuclear engineering

Nuclear engineering is the process by which scientists study and use nuclear energy to create helpful technology for people. Most nuclear engineers use their advanced knowledge of nuclear fission and fusion to help operate nuclear power plants that provide dependable electric power to homes and businesses. While this is the main use of nuclear energy throughout the world, nuclear engineering also has been instrumental in the development of radiation treatment for cancer patients and in the use of nuclear energy as spacecraft fuel.

Applications of Nuclear Engineering

Scientists in the United States began to actively apply nuclear engineering in the 1940s as they worked to build the atomic bomb, the first nuclear weapon ever created. The atomic bombing of Japan ended World War II and marked the beginning of the nuclear age. During the Cold War standoff that lasted much of the rest of the century, the United States and the Soviet Union rapidly built up stockpiles of nuclear weapons in an arms race and attempted to best each other with military might. Ultimately, the Cold War ended in the early 1990s without resorting to nuclear war, and by late 2023, a total of 191 nations had signed the United Nations’ Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which aims to stem the global flow of nuclear weapons. The focus of nuclear engineering, meanwhile, has shifted to mostly peaceful uses.

One of the most common applications for nuclear engineering is the creation of clean energy. By 2024, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), for example, the United States maintained fifty-four nuclear power plants that housed a total of ninety-four nuclear reactors. Here, nuclear fission, the splitting of atomic nuclei, is used to generate energy while emitting only minimal amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that can harm the environment when present in excessive amounts. Much of this energy is then used to produce electricity; nuclear power provides about 20 percent of the United States’ electricity and about 10 percent of the world’s. Another benefit of nuclear energy, aside from its relative cleanliness, is its reliability. Nuclear energy usually is available for a fixed cost, unlike natural gas, which has prices that fluctuate.

Because nuclear energy is so highly versatile, nuclear engineers and physicists have found a number of other beneficial uses for it, such as medical treatments. In 1896, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen announced his discovery of X-rays, a form of electromagnetic  radiation that allowed doctors to observe the insides of patients and could be used to burn cancerous cells from people’s bodies. By 1899 radiation had become an accepted form of cancer treatment. Doctors discovered soon thereafter, however, that unregulated radiation was just as effective in causing cancer as curing it. In 2000 the United States Food and Drug Administration authorized doctors to begin using new technology to design more precise methods to deliver radiation treatments; this eventually led to the creation of radiation that could pinpoint cancer cells without damaging a patient’s healthy tissue.

Nuclear engineering has also been used for the specialized creation of electric spacecraft fuel. The production of this electricity differs from the processes used in standard nuclear power plants in that it uses energy from the decay of radioactive plutonium-238. This process is carried out on spacecraft, which are equipped with radioisotope power systems, or RPSs. By transforming the heat of decaying plutonium into electricity, RPSs can efficiently power the various vehicles that traverse outer space to explore the Moon and other celestial bodies. RPSs are safe and almost never require maintenance; these advantages have allowed such systems to remain relevant to spacecraft and space exploration for many decades. In 2025, NASA, the US Department of Energy, and Idaho National Laboratory continued development of the Fission Surface Power program, which is designed to provide electricity for sustained human and robotic exploration of the Moon and Mars.

The Nuclear Engineer Occupation

Described simply, nuclear engineers are individuals who create and oversee the infrastructure and processes responsible for creating nuclear energy. They design, construct, and manage the equipment used for operating nuclear power plants, medical equipment, and spacecraft parts. Engineers can also serve in a variety of research and development positions in which they make discoveries that other scientists can then apply in the field.

The minimum educational requirement to become a nuclear engineer is a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering. To ensure that students are well rounded in the field when they graduate, these degrees usually require a combination of classroom study, laboratory work, and field research.

Once people have become fully qualified nuclear engineers, they may choose one of two career paths. The first and most common of these is to work in an office as an analyst or a technical writer. These engineers may research novel methods of harnessing nuclear energy or write instruction manuals for operating technology in facilities such as power plants. Other engineers may take a more direct role in managing nuclear energy by becoming employed at a power plant.

Here, before even beginning to operate any kind of machinery, new recruits must undergo a maximum of eight months of training to ensure their competence in safety rules and regulations. Once they are sufficiently knowledgeable to begin working, these engineers generally monitor the operations of reactor cores and various other pieces of technology to ensure they are working safely and to prevent potential nuclear meltdowns and other accidents.

Bibliography

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