 Hi everybody, my name is Jason Klein. I'm the Director of P20 Initiatives at Northern Illinois University, and we're back with another episode of Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads. We're really excited about this. We've had wind energy. You may have seen that episode and the individual who was our guest in that episode, his background, he was a nuclear engineering student for his bachelor's degree and his master's degree. He's never done anything with nuclear engineering. Well, we're going to take care of that with this episode because we're really excited to have a guest today who works at the Byron Nuclear Power Plant. So, Jackson is our guest today. I'm going to turn it over to you, Jackson, to introduce yourself and then we'll start asking questions about your career and your work. Awesome. Well, thank you very much, Jason. It's a pleasure to be here. Hello everyone. My name is Jackson Martinez. I'm an operation shift manager with Exxon Corporation. I'm a civil engineer by background with a bachelor's degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology. I work at the Byron Nuclear Power Station, which is located in Northern Illinois. I am licensed by the federal government to operate the two nuclear reactor units at Byron Station. I use electricity 24-7 and all year round, supplying about 2,500 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power approximately two million households. Organizationally, I work for Exxon, which is an electric utility. As a corporation, we work in all major areas of the electric utility business from generation of electricity to distribution to competitive sales. I work within the generation division producing electricity for our customers. This is awesome. So, I mean, those numbers are just incredible to think about. We'll come back to that. You have two million households being powered and having the power plant running 24-7. We obviously all, if we're watching this, understand the importance of this. I almost made a dad joke there and said the power of this. So, with this, tell us what a typical day or a typical week looks like in your work. Sweet. I'll give you a month. So, I lead a crew. So, my crew and I work on a rotating 12-hour shift schedule with a five-week rotation. We rotate between working days, nights, weekdays and weekends, with our fifth week being a training week, during which my team goes through a re-qualification process that includes dynamic scenarios in our May control room simulator, as well as written exams. Now, a rotating shift work can seem tough, but it does come with some perks. For example, between two of our work weeks, I do have a span of seven days off, which is part of my normal rotation. It's effectively a seven-day weekend. Now, on a typical day, I arrive at the nuclear power plant and go through security checkpoints to access the plant. It's very much like going through an airport. We have a dedicated security force on site given the nuclear technology that we use. From there, I make my way to the main control room of the plant. Visually, the main control room is like the inside of a spaceship. The control room has indications and control switches for planning equipment and is where my team monitors and operates the two nuclear reactors we have on site. The main control room is manned at all times, and when I arrive, I take a turnover from my counterpart on the previous shift. During the day, my team works with other departments such as maintenance and engineering to perform surveillance and work on plant equipment. We test equipment to ensure that the equipment functions as designed. We also modify our plant to upgrade components for safer and more reliable operations. At the end of my workday, I am relieved by a counterpart shift manager working on the next shift. Very cool. Can we go into a little bit more detail about the training part of that, the ongoing training? If I understand you correctly, every five weeks you're re-engaging and on-the-job training essentially. Is that correct? Yes. I think it's one of the most surprising aspects of the job that a lot of folks don't necessarily know about. Training is a cornerstone of what we do. We go through rigorous training to do what we do. To start, to even be qualified to be in the position, I had to pass an intense two-year training program to obtain my federal license. This program involves written and dynamic test scenarios with evaluations from representatives of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. My training ensures that I know the plant like the back of my hand and can respond to equipment failures. It's very much like flight pilot training. My team and I operate Byron Station day in and day out, but we are trained specifically for responding to casualty situations to ensure that under all conditions we maintain our reactor units shut down and cooled. My primary function is to protect the health and safety of the public. Once qualified, I attend training every five weeks to ensure I remain proficient in my role. Training is a cornerstone, as I said, and it's not just for operators. We train all sorts of individuals, for example. Our maintenance and chemistry technicians also attend training to ensure proficiency in their field and to learn about changes in the plant in terms of processes and designs. Yeah, that level of training, I mean, I've worked in school districts where teachers have time for professional learning every week, which is fantastic. But that level of training that you're doing, it actually reminds me of pro-athletes or musicians who are training, really, right, all the time and then performing just as well. And that's really what you guys are doing. So that's really neat. I want to come back and talk a little bit more about the training, but let's go back in time. Walk us through kind of your education. I mean, you said you went to IIT, but walk us through what those steps of required education were. And one of the things I want to know about is that two-year training program to get qualified. Like where did that fall into all that? So if you can, you can take us back to high school if you want and walk us through from there, the educational process. Okay. So I would say it started really in high school with my love and passion for math and science. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew that I was very good and enjoyed math and science. So I stuck with that. That led me to an afternoon program in high school where I got to learn about the engineering, project management and architectural fields. That's where I learned that I had a passion specifically for engineering. I chose civil engineering going into college to a degree as a guest based on the experience that I had thus far. I had learned through this afternoon program about opportunities within civil and architectural engineering and structural engineering as well. Now in college is where things really blossomed. I was involved in a number of organizations for professional development and a network and was able to talk with a lot of representative from Exalon. So I landed an internship opportunity with Exalon at the Byron nuclear station. While I was there as a civil engineering intern working on structures monitoring and looking at the health of cement structures, I did get insight into Exalon as a whole and the operations field as well. When I came in full time, there were opportunities for me to expand and broaden my knowledge base beyond civil engineering. So it's a plant engineering role where I work hand in hand with operations looking at specific systems within the plant. You could think of the plant as like a human, just a human body. It's got all these plants that work together simultaneously to make the plant work. So I was in charge of a number of systems within a facility and that allowed me to then gain insight into the mechanical and the electrical engineering fundamentals. With that, there was the opportunity to go to initial license training or ILT. That was the two year program that I completed. To be part of that, you have to go through a screening process which involves basic math and science as well as what we call a speed test to a degree. It's called a POS test and the intent of that is to evaluate a candidate's ability to respond and analyze data quickly to garner solutions and reach conclusions. So those two prereqs were what allowed me to then go into the program and the program itself is very intense. To learn the plant like the back of your hand, you have to have exams effectively every week and the passing minimum is 80% with an expectation from our management team of 90%. You're looking at integrated plant knowledge and understanding how things fail and what actions as an operator you would need to take to stabilize the plant. Having completed that and now working on rotating shift, we do go back every five weeks to retrain and the intent of that is to keep us on our toes. A sort of proficient to make sure that we understand the different circumstances that can come our way and we go through as many scenarios as our training staff can think of. So tell us about what type of knowledge and skills. I mean you've just said the math, the science, the analyzing data quickly and accurately. But if you were talking directly to someone who was 16 or 17 or 20 years old, they said, I think I might be interested in this. What do I need to be good at? What are the things you would say, any kind of skill that they need to be good at to be successful? Okay, for that I would say teamwork and communication. That's the key. I work in a team environment where we look to each other's knowledge and experiences to solve problems. We are open to one another about where we may need some help to improve and aim to support one another while we're at work. We have an expectation for communications, which we call three way communications. So when we have two or more people communicating, we validate communications by repeating a person's communication and ending it with that is correct. So for an example, if a field operator is going to turn a valve and they have to communicate to the main control room, they'll say control room. This is field operator John looking to manipulate valve XYZ. The main control room will then say, understand John, you are ready and in the field to manipulate valve XYZ. And then the field operator will then ended with that is correct. And so this type of communication is what we do day in and day out. It's second nature to us. So it's interesting when I find myself doing this at home to some weird looks that I may get from my loved one. But it is it is overly important for us to communicate clearly, concisely, and so that everyone understands where we're at in say a surveillance procedure or an operating procedure. So I listened to a very, very long book last summer about the Apollo program. And in that book there was a lot of excerpted ex transcript excerpts from actual mission control to astronaut conversations. It sounded very much like what you just described with three way communication. It's it's not the fastest way to communicate but it is definitely very accurate and and when you want to avoid making a mistake. Oh no, that's not what I meant. This is a better way to communicate for sure. That's right. That's great. So teamwork and communication. I mean right if someone's just going to focus on math and science and think that they can be an individual engineer and be successful. It sounds like that's probably not going to work out so well. Alright, it does take I would say the the science behind it builds a foundation, but the teamwork, the collaboration, the communications is what really makes it work. So thinking about we actually let's let's turn this into two questions. Civil engineering first, and then not just nuclear energy but the energy field second. In fact, how would you what would you consider the job prospects to be over the next 10 years for civil engineers as well as for people looking to get into the energy field. So within the energy field I would say definitely stable with an excellent itself. It is important for us to maintain a talent pipeline to ensure continuity of the business into the future. We need electricity. So that's the commodity that's something that we, we as a society need. And frankly we take for granted right we take for granted when we turn on the light switch or to turn on the light switch in a work. So we really focus on maintaining a talent pipeline. And for us, it's really our new employees that bring so much to the table for us in terms of innovation and drive building on the culture of inclusion that we have an excellent. We've seen our employees approach situations or challenges from a different lens, allowing us to use innovative technologies to solve problems. For example, we used to send divers into perform inspections of underwater structure. Nowadays we use robotics and drone technologies for these applications. This is exciting stuff and we are in need of employees that know and appreciate this technology to allow us to test the status quo and find ways to leverage these technologies. Now from a civil engineering and just broadly engineering perspective. Engineers, we solve problems and our world will always have problems to solve. So it's certainly something definitely for for like a young individual to look at prospects. There are always advances in technology with regards to structures with regards to roads bridges and even in broader terms like the medical fields for for other engineering disciplines where we need folks that have a passion for for math and science to really take us to the next level. Awesome. What do you like most about your job what do you what do you love about your job. Oh man where do I start. Let's see so I think the biggest thing with regards to my job that I love is the opportunities that my job grants me. My job allows me to be so let me let me take a step back so excellent we have employee resource resource groups or ERGs that allow us employees to volunteer and be involved in their community. I love to do that. And excellent grants me the time and actually really prioritizes for me to to be involved in my community. So as part of many of these employee resource groups. I had the opportunity to volunteer at high schools at colleges presenting what a career may look like with an excellent within the energy field as well as serve as a science judge for various competitions. So for me to be able to give back and and have a company like excellent that really showcases that and and emphasizes that as part of my career is great and I love that. The second part of that would be. I love the people that I work with I work with on a team with nuclear professionals top notch individuals, folks that are frankly smarter than I am and that's great to have an opportunity to lead folks. Such a caliber is awesome. We're able to to really pull on each other experiences and knowledge to look for innovative solutions. And I think that's what really makes things turn for us, especially when we're working on a night or on a night shift weekend. That's that's awesome stuff. So thank you for sharing that. Now you already told us that and you saw my reaction to the amount of training and the ongoing cyclical nature of the training that was very surprising. You said that's one of the most surprising aspects of your job. Is there anything else about your job that's either surprising to an outsider like me or that may be as part of the job that people in the control room don't really like to do, but it's an important part of the job and anybody who's interested in in becoming part of that field should be aware like hey this is part of the work too. Okay, so I've touched on it a little bit. I would say a tough a certainly a challenging part of our job is the fact that we have to work. We're in an industry where we have to work 24 seven every day of the year. So that's that's days that's nice that's week days weekend and even holidays. So to accomplish this, my workplace has five operating crews that work a rotating shift schedule. So we're all offset to be able to meet the schedule. We have minimal manning requirements. So this can be challenging as one has to be accustomed to working both days and nights. This requires balance and preparation that would say, for me, key to being successful while working rotating shift work is to plan ahead and to know when I will be off to make family and personal events and to look to take time off as needed. I also invested in blackout drapes, which is a month during sunny summer days. I work with many operators that have worked many years on a rotating shift and have families. They would also say that planning ahead is key to also enjoy that seven day weekend. Our work is like like that of like a hospital staff that we the workplace has to be open 24 seven so so we make on all accommodations necessary for that as well. Cool. That's great. Maybe this is an easy one. I suppose there's a whole group of people who might argue that it's not an easy question to answer. How do you believe your job has a positive impact on the world? Okay, so I would start off by saying that we power lives. So we provide our community communities electricity 24 seven every day of the year. I feel we've we've grown as a society to take electricity for granted. So we expect it to be there. So there's a lot that goes into being able to turn on our light switches reliably expect to have electricity available for use. My team works diligently to produce power safely and using the technology, i.e. nuclear, which does not produce greenhouse gases. So in that respect we are agreeing technology. Awesome. And then we'll wrap up with this. Thinking broadly, it doesn't have to be about your career specifically. If you and maybe you've had the chance to do this when you've been interacting with high school or college students. But if you get to talk to a young person 14 16 18 20 22 years old, just what advice would you give them in general as they're thinking about what career they might want to engage with? Great question. I would say, first, look inward to see what drives and motivates you. For me as a kid, I knew that I love math and science. So I knew that I want to do something in those fields. The next is to be open about opportunities. As a kid and never thought I would be working at a nuclear power plant. The opportunity with an internship at excellent. I took an internship with an open mind, seeking to learn from here. I never look back. I've continued to learn and build on new experiences. I think it's important for young people to be open about things that may not necessarily, they may not necessarily know much about and to see if they could see themselves in such career roles. If anything, this can help people or individuals make an informed decision about what to do and don't like while removing any of the unknowns or uncertainties about certain jobs. That is great advice. It is almost like all of the people who are working on career ed kinds of stuff with students throughout the state of Illinois. It's almost like you are one of those people saying those things. One of those teachers or administrators at the school district or the post secondary level. So thank you for that great advice. It has been a real pleasure, pleasure having you. I guess I'm going to finish with one last question because there is going to be all kinds of young people watching this and they're going to wonder about this. You know, their exposure to a nuclear power plant is in one form and it's a cartoon. So you know where I'm going with this, right? Oh, you know it. Yeah, so tell us how much, how similar or dissimilar is it to Homer Simpson's experiences in a nuclear power plant? I know what I'm hoping you'll answer. Oh yeah, so I get this question a lot actually. I figured you did. I figured that. So we're nothing like the Simpsons. So I would say we do have cooling towers, so that is a similarity. But beyond that, I'd say that's probably where it ends. We, the nuclear technology that we use, so the fission process, it's powerful stuff. We're looking at uranium pellets that may be the size of your nail and that small fragment can produce so much energy, thousands of equivalent pounds in coal, hundreds of barrels of oil in such a small volume. So that's, that's powerful stuff. But I'll quote Spider-Man, right? With great power comes great responsibility. So one thing that's overly important for us is what we work around is to make sure that we produce electricity in a responsible and safe manner. So my team, whether it's in our training in the way that we monitor equipment, we're always thinking about how are we going to keep our reactor safe so that we can continue to produce electricity for the long term. So that is, that's what I would say regarding just the nuclear industry as well as a whole is these facilities are robust structures. They are fail safe facilities, meaning that when something goes bad, the facility aims to shut itself down without any operator interference. So with that, there's, we as operators just validate that automatic logic schemes are occurring and we take action if not. But generally speaking, ultra safe facilities, they have backups upon backups to make sure that we can accomplish certain functions. And like I said, day in and day out, we hang out 100% power producing the electricity that our society dearly needs. Awesome. Well, thanks again so much for being with us. And for those of you watching, this is this is the shift from school year to summer career pathways, virtual trailheads. You may be watching this in the middle of the winter, of course. And so it doesn't matter. We are going to keep producing career pathways, virtual trailheads, and we want you to let us know what careers you think are useful careers for us to highlight in a career pathway virtual trailhead. If you have a specific individual you think would make a great guest, or if you have specific questions that you would like us to ask, connect with us on Twitter at P 20 network that's at P two zero network. All one word and we look forward to bringing you more in the future. Thanks again for being with us today.