The path from Ex-Navy Nuke to an engineer by Tony Green

I have viewed a few blogs, on MySpace.com among other places that discusses the preparation that being an Ex-Nuke gives you before attempting to make it through an undergraduate engineering curriculum.
I think I have an interesting background to speak on this topic as I completed an engineering degree prior to participating in the Navy Nuclear program. If you are wondering why the hell I did the Nuke thing as an enlisted person after college you have a legitimate question. However, that will be the topic of another blog at some point in the future. What will say is that going through nuclear pipeline gives a wonderful background to aid any potential engineering student.
Normally most professional engineers have a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree and years of practical on-hands experience. The classroom training gives you the tools to enable you to begin learning your engineering craft while you’re on hands experience actually allows to become the trusted engineer capable of analyzing and solving real world problems.
Most of the engineering curriculum is theoretical as engineers are the ones who are trusted to designing equipment. The folks who designed many of the reactor systems that a nuke stands watch on were engineers. It is difficult to make the best design if there is not a decent level of understanding of the meaning of the theory. Nuclear training allows obtaining the on hands experience to attain that understanding. And as we all know the operators are the ones who ran the plant under the guidance of their nuclear-trained chiefs and officers.
Going aft in any nuclear powered vessel in the engine room will yield many on hand applications of these engineering principles. For example, reactor plant fresh water heat exchanger (RFPW) cools the coolant purification loop, the reactor coolant pumps and other loads. Essentially this is a shell and tube heat exchanger covered in heat transfer classes. The operator on watch is concerns that temperature that the RPFW remain within spec while the heat loads fluctuate. Another example is the process from where steam leaves the Steam Generator and goes through the Main Steam stops to the motor generators and turbine generators and exhausted steam that is created is condensed and sent back to the condensate pumps and the main feed pumps before returning the Steam Generator to start the process again. This process is covered as the Carnot cycle which covered thermodynamics courses.
Most Navy ships use an evaporator to distill sea water into drinking and potable water. The underlying principles that govern the process, distillation are covered in classes on mass transfer. The operator on watch is concerned that the water that is created is clean and the concentrated salt, the brine, goes back to the sea.
In my view, regardless of which came first, being nuclear trained or getting an engineering degree success comes down to on how you use all of your engineering training to make the best future for yourself. After going through all the rigors that are associated with being a nuke, all while serving our country; you certainly deserve it regardless of the choice you make for your college studies after leaving the Nuclear Navy.