ANU is offering a new Engineering major called Nuclear Systems, which is about nuclear stewardship and the ways in which Australian engineers can safeguard, maintain and develop nuclear systems. But I want to know, what exactly IS nuclear stewardship and what do people actually do?
I imagine I'll still be learning about constructing nuclear reactors and such, but apparently I would need more training overseas to become a proper Nuclear Engineer since Australia is more focused on dealing with nuclear waste rather than harnessing nuclear energy, which I might want to get into in the future.
(from what i know from physics)
your role as a nuclear engineer could range from making sure things tick off all the boxes outlined in safety protocols and regulations, ensuring processes like disposal of nuclear waste is done correctly and safely, environmental management, designing nuclear reactors etc. however, this is the purely energy side of nuclear engineering. there are some other roles invovling aspects of nuclear physics, such as radiology (though as an engineer you would obviously be designing these systems), many mining operations, materials processing, and the list goes on. essentially, anything that uses radioactive material, which varies from nuclear medicine to household items like smoke detectors, likely have nuclear engineers and physicists working to design and implement these items (i only know this as i was interested to study medical physics, which obviously involves a lot of nuclear physics).
nuclear stewardship appears to be an australian term, it basically just means "managing stuff carefully" (definition of stewardship), but i cant see this mentioned in the anu major description anywhere. looking at the courses you study too, it seems that you will learn about the energy side of things, as well as the other uses that i mentioned above.
also there is a singular nuclear reactor in australia, that would be the OPAL reactor, managed by ANSTO. however this is a research facility more than a power plant, so yes you are right you would likely be working overseas if u wanted to do something with energy plants and all that (unless if u want to work on making fusion reactors work), but naturally there is a lot of work not involving this industry in australia.
