Our student this week is, Alyx Wszolek, pictured at right and below, a nuclear engineering major who accepted a co-op at Exelon Generation, located in Warrenville, Illinois.
Wszolek describes the department she worked in and what her main responsibilities were.
“I worked in the Reactor Engineering Group within Plant Operations Department at Three Mile Island,” said Wszolek. “I worked intensively aiding in the Special Nuclear Material Inventory, including a special six-year task of viewing the ID tags way down on the fuel assemblies in the spent fuel pools. My largest project worked entirely with the SPND or incore detectors as well as it’s monitoring system. I worked on extracting, organizing and trending data from old detectors. I was able to discover trends in failing detectors and create a database to document past and future SPND failures. I added a way to trend the detectors currently in the core with the intent on finding failed levels early, to a current RE procedure.”
The most valuable benefit Wszolek received during her co-op assignment was in learning all about plant systems and the jobs at a nuclear power plant.
“I was able to tour Three Mile Island Reactor 2, see a backup diesel run, got to be on spent fuel pool bridge, go inside two different cooling towers, and present in front of senior management and vice presidents,” she said. “This isn’t even all I got to experience, I was very lucky.”