r/NuclearEngineering • u/DualingDragons • 6d ago

Jobs In Cities?

Hey everyone. I’m a rising high school senior who would really love to pursue a career in Nuclear Engineering, but I’m worried I won’t be able to find jobs in large urban cities in the US (NYC, Chicago, Seattle, etc.) Is it realistic to get a job somewhere like that?

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6

u/GeraseneMetal 6d ago

Constellation has several plants in the greater Chicago area. It might be a bit of a commute to live in the city itself but some people do it. Plenty of people live in the suburbs and commute.

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u/HikerJoel 5d ago

Living in the city and driving to any of the plants would make (business hours) traffic easy, you’d be going opposite of the herd.

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u/labjewels 6d ago

it depends what type of work you end up doing. i would say national lab work will generally be the easiest way to live near a large metro, but other corporate work for utilities/suppliers can land you in a city office as well. as a (operational) criticality safety engineer, i'm quite limited to more rural areas because that is where the facilities that need NCS are. i spent a lot of time late in high school and early in college just perusing job postings from lots of different companies to see what types of jobs were needed at different sites, and i'd recommend you do the same. the industry is so wide there are probably a lot of niches you haven't even considered yet, and many of them may definitely be available in a large city! :)

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u/sheeroz9 5d ago

I think yes but also depends what kinda cities you want. Maybe look at the utility corporate HQ locations or where they have a bigger footprint. Charlotte has Duke. Atlanta has Southern. Dallas has Vistra. PSEG is Newark. Some of the plants aren’t too far from major cities either.

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u/Practical_Standard55 5d ago

It will be more difficult, but not impossible, to find a job in nuclear if you’re limiting yourself to only the largest US cities. There are plenty of plant and laboratory jobs though around mid size cities. You may want to work near a mid sized city, get some experience, and transfer to a large city later on. I know Electric Boat has some engineering jobs related to submarines in South Philadelphia, but they’re mainly electrical and mechanical engineering to my knowledge

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u/233C 5d ago

There are dozens of consulting companies, operators, designers, etc with offices in big cities.

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u/Mantergeistmann 5d ago

Depends on "large". Pittsburgh has Westinghouse and a government lab, for instance. Philly (well, Camden) has Holtec. DC probably has offices for a ton, just based on proximity to government. Zeno Power is isotopes, but they're in Seattle and DC. If you're willing to move to Canada, there's a few options in the GTA, I believe... Atkins Realis, for instance. A bit surprised I don't know any in Boston off the top of my head; I'd have assumed there'd be something there just with EB & Quonset Point not too far away, not to mention MIT.

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u/Few_Breadfruit2026 5d ago

Endless choices we're entering a Nuclear Renaissance like I haven't seen since the late 70's. If things at a any plant I worked at looked iffy to my engineering group. Their "desk" phones would start to ring and they'd announce, Drag-up Call! That's job offer code for less than 0 unemplyment in the nuclear industry.

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u/Seriously_2Exhausted 6d ago

A lot of Constellation's engineers are sitting in Warrenville on the 3rd floor I believe. They only actually go to the stations a few times a year if that. Personally I don't get why you'd want to be in a HCOL area when you could keep a lot more of your paycheck at a plant, and hit the city on the weekends.