[Carrier Comms:] All engines ahead, one third for five knots, aye, Sir.
[Narrator:] You’re starting the fission process within the reactor.
[Submarine Comms:] 1-6-0 feet dive by Chief of the Watch over the 1-MC dive, dive.
ETs, they are the ones who actually move control rods in and out and actually start up the reactor.
Our endgame is to be part of a watch team that supports safe reactor operation
to provide propulsion for our carriers and our submarines.
Our job consists of starting up and shutting down the nuclear reactor.
And doing maintenance on equipment related to reactor safety.
[ETN:] If there are any cautions, you have caution info.
[Narrator:] Pressure, temperature, flow through the primary systems.
We take care of the interface between how we’re able to obtain that information
and see it in our control consoles.
There are a lot of circuit cards that we do maintenance on.
[ETN:] Right now, we are reinstalling a capacitor bank.
[Narrator:] I joined straight out of high school.
I knew I wanted to do something science-related with my career and something engineering related.
I was like, in 3 years will anyone in my graduating class be operating a nuclear reactor?
Probably not.
It may seem daunting, but it’s honestly easy after you get used to it.
So the nuclear reactor is pretty amazing.
These few hundred pounds of uranium are doing more work than you could even imagine.
The reactor is self-sustaining. We can go underway for months at a time now.
There’s never been a nuclear accident associated with naval nuclear power.
It’s pretty impressive.
We are ETs. We’re better.
And we can quantify that, because we get paid more.
I wanted something that challenged me.
I’m really into academics, I love school.
So it really just set me up for what I was looking for.
