SRO License Class

I am roughly two years into my SRO License Class. For those of you who have no idea what that means, SRO stands for Senior Reactor Operator. You see in order for a person to be allowed to operate a nuclear reactor to make power they first have to obtain a license to do so from the NRC, which stands for Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a.k.a. the Federal Government. And unlike most of the non law enforcement divisions of the federal government, the NRC actually has a decent amount of power, so companies generally do what the NRC tells them to do. Anyways, to obtain the license, the company puts you through a roughly 18 month to 2 year program in order to give you the knowledge and ability necessary to operate the power plant. In general this is a good thing. We don’t want any shlub off the street just being able to walk up and operate a nuclear reactor. If you need me to explain why then you do not have a healthy respect for science or technology.

Anyways, we’re coming down to the end of the program. Thus far I would have to say that I have done above average in the program. The program is split into a number of different parts and each part imbuing the potential operator with the abilities necessary to pass the NRC license exam. The first part was GFES, or General Fundamentals…I forget what the ES is for, but I don’t care right now, anyways I did not do spectacular is GFES. There were three reasons for this: 1) I know too much about nuclear reactors and how they actually work and GFES is so basic that I did poorly in the Reactor Theory section because of this, 2) Janel had not moved to Vicksburg yet and so I was spending my weekends driving back and forth from Louisiana to Mississippi, which wasted a good deal of time, and 3) a good friend of mine passed away in the middle of the training and his funeral was the weekend before one of the exams. That being said, I passed, and in fact on the final GFES exam I was tied for the highest score in the class. This has been typical of my performance. I don’t do great in the leadup to final exams, but I ace the fucking shit out of the finals. This was the case with the Systems portion of the training program, which is a little  slice of hell during which you basically earn an engineering degree in 5 months. No joke this was by far the hardest 5 months of school I’ve ever had and I am in fact both a rocket scientist and a nuclear physicist. Again, I did poorly on several of the intermittent tests, even failed the one following the Cepheid Reunion that year. This caused untold problems for me, but again, like I said, I did very well on the last System’s exam. I was tied for second place on the System’s comprehensive test.

Now we are in the Simulator portion of our training. We spend our days in a mock-up of the control room, with all the nobs and buttons and alarms (holy shit the alarms) and everything else in working order. We try our best to muddle our way through the various scenarios they put us through where terrible things happen to the plant and you have to respond in just the right way or you get yelled at. I’ve been doing okay in simulator. I would say I’m middle of the pack or so. I did screw up during our first evaluation, taking an automatic controller to manual when I shouldn’t have which caused us to scram on a transient we shouldn’t have. But again, our actual eval is next week, so we’ll see how that goes.

However, I’m not really here to talk about my performance. I’m here to talk about how we are motivated. What has been constant for me during this program is the complete and total doubt in my abilities that I have received from our head instructor and others in the training program. But it’s not just doubt. It’s the expression of that doubt in telling us constantly that we are not good enough and are going to fail. Because you see it’s not just me that gets this treatment. We all do, everyone in the program get’s told on a regular basis that we will fail. That we will have wasted 2 years of our lives in this program. Now granted, some of us get this treatment more often than others, but I get it a lot.

I understand what it is. It is a motivational tool. The people telling me this stuff don’t actually think I will fail. They may not be completely sure that I will pass with flying colors, but I’m pretty sure they think I’ll make it. But, it is a bad motivational tool. No wait, I’m sorry, it is a shitty, terrible, bad, horrible motivational tool that sucks from here to china. But it’s the one being employed. And I don’t think it’s just this one instructor. I don’t think it’s just our class. I don’t think it’s just our site. I think the whole damn nuclear industry is like this. And I think I have the Navy to thank for it.

You see, former members of the US Navy make up roughly 80-90% of nuclear operators. Go figure, the US Navy operates a shit-ton of reactors and trains a load of people to operate those reactors. Companies like to hire people with experience, hence companies hire ex-Navy folks to run their commercial nuclear reactors. In fact, the other 12 members of my class are former Navy. And I think this is how the Navy trains and motivates people. They beat down on them in hopes that they will get angry and fight back and become better for it. This can be a valid motivational tool if utilized correctly. It’s used on sports teams all the time. But here’s the trick, you have to follow the beat down with a build up. You have to build the people up after you crush them. That is not what I am undergoing. I am undergoing a continual crush.

Today I took an OTEC board. I don’t remember what OTEC stands for, but basically three people, a couple trainers and an operations management person, sit down with you and ask you questions. In the past they have told us quiet clearly that you should take your time with the questions and not stray away from the answers too much. So that is what I did, when asked a direct question, I made the direct answer and I made sure of the answer before I said it. I passed. But they were very disappointed in me. They expected me to do better, whatever that means. They didn’t think I should have taken so much time with my answers or forced them to drag things out of me. I realized that the crush isn’t going to stop. No matter how well or not so well I do, I will get crushed. Even if I get my license it won’t stop. Every day, every hour I will be subject to the crush. Because it’s not just the training program that is run by former Navy people. It’s the whole damn industry. This is how the industry motivates people, by crushing them. Outside of Operations the crush isn’t so bad, it’s almost survivable given that you don’t have any other options. But inside Operations it isn’t. Unless of course, you happened to have been in the Navy before, and well I wasn’t. And I wasn’t for good reasons.

Call it what you want, but I would not function well in the military. Physically I would have been fine. But mentally I would not have done well. I would have gotten out as fast as I possibly could. Which is what I am going to do now. This class has taught me a very important lesson, which is that I don’t want to be a nuclear operator. Oh I’m gonna get my license and I’m gonna tell all the people who have been crushing me for the last 2 years to suck it long and suck it hard, but I don’t plan of ever using it.

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One Response to SRO License Class

  1. Nojh says:

    Wow. That really sucks. I mean it’s good that you’re going to finish. But it really sucks that they’ve made the industry as poisonous for someone as motivated as you.

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