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Nuclear Physicist Career
Name: Jake
Status: other
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
What does a nuclear physicist do?
We have a nuclear power plant in our town. Do they have nuclear
physicists?
Replies:
There probably are not nuclear physicists at the plant, but I would bet
there are nuclear engineers. In general, physicists are a bit more
interested in understanding and engineers a bit more focused on making
things work. As such, a physicist might be interested in understanding
some of the science involved in the process, but, thankfully, plants
will employ engineers so that everything works properly. It may be
possible that occasionally a physicist shows up to study something, but
for the most part physicists will only be around reactors built
especially for research purposes.
As for careers in nuclear physics, there are several options that fall
into two categories (sort of): applied and basic science. For applied
science, you will often find nuclear physicists working with other
researchers to understand how to improve nuclear energy, or in the realm
of weapons related work. Energy research will often be done at a
national lab or dedicated research reactor. There are many people
working on improving fission style reactors and many still believe that
nuclear fusion may one day be a useful source of energy. Those that
work on weapons related research will often study how nuclear chain
reactions occur with very high temperature and pressure physics. After
all, if you must understand how those things work, it is much better to
know about them without actually having to explode one. Another area in
which there are nuclear physicists hard at work is in improving our
ability to detect nuclear material so that we are capable of preventing
terrorist attacks.
As for basic science, there are several flavors of nuclear physicist.
Many study the properties of the nucleus or work to understand other
forms of nuclear matter. In addition to neutrons and protons, there is
a whole zoo full of nuclear matter, all with different properties.
Another very common area of study in nuclear physics has to do with
these mysterious particles known as neutrinos. If we are able to
understand neutrinos better, then we will also be able to know a great
deal more about the universe as a whole(and in particular the early,
early universe).
All that being said, I am not a nuclear physicist and so I very well
could be mistaken about exactly what goes on where and who does exactly
what. It is also very common for a single researcher to have multiple
interests and thus span many different research areas.
Michael S. Pierce
Materials Science Division
Argonne National Laboratory
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Update: June 2012
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