A couple of weeks ago, I began a faculty fellowship at the Detroit Edison Fermi 2 nuclear power plant in Newport, MI. If no one has noticed, all of my morning and afternoon posts are scheduled as they post at even intervals 8:00, 9:30, 11:30, etc. Thus, I wrote them the night before and scheduled them for posting the next day. I hate to appear to be late to the game on some stories, but internet connectivity isn't a priority over at Fermi 2 - partly due to heavy cyber-security, but mostly due to the fact that I am extremely busy over there each day.The reason for the fellowship is that we will be offering nuclear engineering courses for the first time at Oakland University in fall 2010. I will be teaching the very first one tentatively named "Fundamentals of Nuclear Engineering." Although I have been a fan of nuclear energy for some time now (anyone reading this blog regularly knows this), I haven't had hands-on experience, and this would be the only class that I could not supplement with experiential knowledge.
Fortunately, one of the industry members of the advisory board of our engineering school has quite a bit of pull and arranged for myself and one colleague to spend time at Fermi 2 this summer. Our purpose at Fermi 2 is to basically be a couple of sponges, and learn everything that we can in these months. So I am having flashbacks to grad school, which for me was some time ago now. In any case, I will write of my chronicles there and the basics of what I have learned. Just not in a lot of engineering detail, and I certainly won't reveal any proprietary information but will instead write about nuclear energy in general. Also, I won't be able to share any pictures on-site because cameras aren't allowed on the F2 campus. Posting such would fly over about as well as a turd in the punchbowl I'm sure. Have I mentioned security is extremely tight?
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