NukeWorker Forum
Career Path => Navy Nuke => Navy:Getting Out => Topic started by: fij on Feb 08, 2008, 09:35
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hello all
i didnt see this anywhere else. i have been on this site for a couple years now but never put a post up. so here we go i hope i am doing it right. i am a et2 got a year and a half left. prospectively having two degree's when i get out one from tesc other from excelsior. i know being nukeworker.com most people would be working at power plants, but i wanted to see if anyone had experience outside power production. what kind of jobs nukes can get out there. nuclear power is a good job but i wanted to see what else is out there. any info would be great thanks
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hello all
i didnt see this anywhere else. i have been on this site for a couple years now but never put a post up. so here we go i hope i am doing it right. i am a et2 got a year and a half left. prospectively having two degree's when i get out one from tesc other from excelsior. i know being nukeworker.com most people would be working at power plants, but i wanted to see if anyone had experience outside power production. what kind of jobs nukes can get out there. nuclear power is a good job but i wanted to see what else is out there. any info would be great thanks
Not necessarily non-nuke but take a look at these threads...Good Luck ;D
http://www.nukeworker.com/forum/index.php/topic,5761.0.html#msg34218
http://www.nukeworker.com/forum/index.php/topic,8345.0.html
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Your options are pretty good. Most employers these days have heard the legend and lore of how tough the training program is and the level of physical and mental stress you go through as a Nuke. I regularly come across employers without much real understanding telling me, "I need a Navy Nuke for this position." It invariably is a position that can be done by another person but the ability to ramp up quickly and understand complex concepts while communicating to different levels of an organization is ultimately very important. The track record is there from those who have gone before you to prove that you will likely perform at a higher level walking in the door.
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Hey, I just started with a nuke pharmacutical company about 4 weeks ago. I was to be a driver, but was instantly shoved into the RSO, or hp, position due to my DOE experiance and now am working on being a tech for the new Cyclotron we are getting. Im still trying to wrap my mind around the laxidazical attitued towards working around compounds that read in the milli and micro and soon full fledged curie levels. There are some good jobs out there just have to go snoopin for them. I work for a company called cardinal health and they have well over 1000 job openings all over the place. Check em out.
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For MM/ELTs and some EWS qual'd ET/EM if you don't mind doing QA work, there is a big desire for inspectors with the company I work for. Pay is OK but you do get a car and gas card for personal use(for a small fee based on how many personal miles you drive a year, but either way you make it just in gas). PM for me for more info.
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I work as a remote operator for BOC Gases. We run 24 plants around the country making air into oxygen argon and nitrogen from our Remote Operations center in PA . Pretty good pay and benefits. Shift work but the schedule is not rough at all. PM me if you want to know more.
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Your options are pretty good. Most employers these days have heard the legend and lore of how tough the training program is and the level of physical and mental stress you go through as a Nuke. I regularly come across employers without much real understanding telling me, "I need a Navy Nuke for this position." It invariably is a position that can be done by another person but the ability to ramp up quickly and understand complex concepts while communicating to different levels of an organization is ultimately very important. The track record is there from those who have gone before you to prove that you will likely perform at a higher level walking in the door.
hedhntr makes a very good point here. To an astute employer, being a Navy Nuke means you are a highly trainable individual and you will also be perceived as a person with a high level of responsibility. Very desireable qualities for most prospective employers.
Your biggest danger is appearing to be 'overqualified' to people outside the nuke field. Another thing to remember is to tailor your resume to the job you are applying for. I never use a 'stock' resume. Rather, I have a basic format with all the vital statistics and then highlight the relevent history and downplay (or even delete) the things that don't apply. And make sure your resume doesn't sound like a Navy evaluation...you've got to use terms that people on the outside can easily relate to. I think there is a thread or two with some info on how NOT to write a resume for Navy Nukes somewhere on this site.
Just remember that yes, your prospects are very good and the possibilities are nearly endless. To give a personal example, I was an MM-ELT out after six. Spent 20 years in commercial power as an HP and have since turned my background and experience into a job teaching technical and business English here in Vienna, Austria. I've since gotten into technical writing, editing, and document translation. I work as little or as much as I want (some of it from home), the pay is better than being an HP tech and I don't have to travel and be away from my family.
I know this has been a bit of a digression, but I'm quite happy the way things turned out. The training and confidence I got from from the Navy Nuke program was a big part of making that possible.
Good luck with the rest of your time in the Navy and your transition back to the civilian world.
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My father spent 8 years as a navy nuke, when he got out he went straight into engineering for commercial. He got his ME degree about 6 years ago and his PE license about 7 years ago.
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I play poker with a former MM2 who drives a Pepsi delivery truck and claims that he loves the job. Takes all kinds, I guess. 8)
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Actually most of the guys I served with went on to do non-nuclear power plant jobs. Many of those jobs required more training or going back to college.
Personally I really liked going back to college instead: I had the GI Bill, college scholarships, and I got to collect unemployment for 6 months while going back to school (aka "job retraining"). Plus the discipline and study habbits that the Nuke Program forced into you should make college a snap. At least it did for me. That was great --> getting good grades, having money in college, and still finding time to have fun!
There are a lot of non-power plant "nuke" jobs too, especially if you want to get involved with the Remediation, Environmental, and the Health Physics aspects. I was a nuke MM but I went on to get my BS in Civil Engineering. My job now is as an Environmental Engineer, but my group specifically deals with radiological remediation projects in the DOD/DOE complex.
One of the big soil remediation projects that I was a part of had several ex-navy nukes on it: the RSO, the Waste Shipper, 2 of the CHPs, the QA Officer, and the Lab Manager. All of us were blueshirts in the Navy, but are now managers in the outside world. I have found a lot ex-nukes in the Environmental and Remediation fields.
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The oil and gas industry is also an option for Navy Nuke experience.
I work for an Oil/gas pipeline company as an I&E Tech. Some companies want pipeline experience first, but with the shortage of Techs right now the chance of breaking in to this field is much higher. I was lucky in that the Supervisor who reviewed my resume had spent 4 years in as an Aviation Electrician on a Carrier so he knew what my background was.
After being hired for the Electrical Skills I made sure to pick up any other skills I could get...one of which happened to be PLC Programming and SCADA. I have now multiplied my worth to the company many times as most of the Techs already here either couldn't pick up the knowledge...or just didn't want to work that hard.
The big oil companies are hiring now so if you are interested look at their websites. I know Chevron is for sure...and if you are willing to work overseas the opportunities are even better.
I work for Plains Pipeline. There are a few other pipelines to check into as well. Kinder Morgan and Valero/NuStar are two that come to mind quickly.
Good luck and keep your options open.
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I've been working in the chemical manufacturing field for almost 18 years now (played RCT for EB @ West Milton for almost 2 years after I got out in '88, then moved to Florida). We have I&E (Instrumentation & Electronics) techs that maintain a lot of the electrical and electronic instrumentation, flow controllers, etc... They make more in base than I do and I supervise a lab which, were I to interview an ex-nuke---MM, EM, ET...doesn't matter---I would probably hire that cat in a heartbeat.
My employers didn't understand much about what ex-Navy nukes can do when they hired me in 1990...that is, until I ran circles around most of the techs and chemists that had been in the Analytical Laboratory for years. Ten years after I started there I became one of the guys running the lab and I still don't have a Chemistry degree. That bugs the crap out of the PhD's in other departments that have to deal with me.
There are a lot of non-nuke opportunities out there that ex-nukes can excel in.
Dave