Has anyone interned at Catawba Nuclear Station (CNS)?

It's on Lake Wylie and I'll be probally staying in either Charlotte NC or Rock Hill. What's the area like or please tell me how your experience/ any advice?

2/16/2008 7:14:18 PM

My grandparents will sell you there lake house for $1.6milliion... it's pretty much exactly 1 mile from there so you could take a boat to work and be there in no time

2/16/2008 7:21:25 PM

Haha, thanks. But I'm pretty sure if I had $1.6 million I probally won't be an intern or working.

I can rent a room from them & they can teach me to drive a boat?

2/16/2008 7:26:30 PM

^^

Is that actually possible? If so, I would be interested.

2/16/2008 7:52:46 PM

Seotaji...are u going to be working for Duke Energy this summer?

2/16/2008 8:06:45 PM

can't speak about catawba specifically, but duke treats their interns pretty well. they appear to be trying to hire on new people before a large chunk of the workforce starts retiring 5-10 years down the road. their intern program is basically to give folks a summer-long interview

2/16/2008 8:12:50 PM

Yup, that's what the guy I talked to said. He was pretty blunt about it. Hey, I'll take over for the oldies.

What did u do for Duke Energy?

2/16/2008 8:16:45 PM

i interned (and now work full time) down at oconee. duke tries to give interns something worthwhile to do, so you shouldn't just be sitting at a computer twiddling your thumbs all day. however, you probably won't get something incredibly substantial, simply because three months isn't enough time to wrap your head around everything.

working 4/10s takes a little getting used to, but you get long weekends. the company paying for the housing for the summer (and letting you take part in the 401k) is pretty sweet, though

2/16/2008 8:43:57 PM

Quote :

"are u going to be working for Duke Energy this summer?"

no, unless i can buy that house and boat to work. then i'll consider getting a job there.

it's like bill gates riding his helo to work, for a fraction of the price.

2/16/2008 8:55:09 PM

Haha, we all want that kind of life!

4/10s ?

2/16/2008 9:35:38 PM

duke engineering typically works a ten hour day, monday through thursday

2/16/2008 9:42:31 PM

I would have guessed they worked a 10 hour day Monday through Friday.

2/16/2008 9:45:51 PM

^normally, that's only the first line supervisors. for the rest of us, it's only during refueling outages

2/16/2008 9:53:19 PM

I interned at Catawba last summer. I lived in the apartments they gave us in Rock Hill.

PM me for more details.

2/17/2008 12:28:23 AM

if you can find me a t-shirt for "DUKE POWER" (not duke energy), i'll pay you for it.

2/17/2008 4:36:39 AM

I work at CNS, in the Digital Process Systems group. The work is alright and there area is ok. My wife and I have a house in York and that area is nice; a sleepy little town. If you are not from the area they typically put you up in Forest Oaks Apartments. From what I understand the place is passible. They are approximately 15 minutes from the plant.

What team are you going to be working for?

2/17/2008 1:40:08 PM

I don't think you can tie up to their dock for security reasons, so you would have to beach your boat and walk a little ways... but yeah, you really could take a boat to work from there...

I'm tempted to give up my career path as an IC design engineer to go work for CNS just b/c my grandparents would literally give me the house and I could go wakeboarding at lunch and after work pretty much every day... freakin swank life... but I can't be hating my job... been there done that...

How do salaries in the power field compare to the Design field?



[Edited on February 17, 2008 at 2:48 PM. Reason : life decisions based on wakeboarding...]

2/17/2008 2:42:47 PM

i work for duke in the hydro-licensing and lake services area - and no, you cant get a boat anywhere near CNS, or MNS, or ONS for that matter.

2/17/2008 7:37:25 PM

Quote :

" they appear to be trying to hire on new people before a large chunk of the workforce starts retiring 5-10 years down the road. their intern program is basically to give folks a summer-long interview"

this is also true for constellation energy (actually even more so). out of all of our clients they seem to be the first to be hit hard by the declining workforce (or at least the first who is really actively responding to it). all of the utilities are having some serious workforce issues and are anticipating them for years to come. its a very nice and lucrative time to be young and want to get in the energy business

2/17/2008 7:49:21 PM

I'm working a co-op with a small municipality, it's nice. There will be a lot of people jumping ship for retirement in the upcoming years. The only bad thing I can say about my co-op is that housing is the biggest pain, so I'm here at home and drive every day. It's about 90 miles each day like that, but it's cheaper than the bullshit prices of housing in that area.

2/17/2008 7:57:56 PM

Quote :

"I'm tempted to give up my career path as an IC design engineer"

oh hell no.

2/17/2008 10:03:13 PM

^Seconded.

2/17/2008 10:42:32 PM

Lots of personal reasons behind that one...

I've done high speed PCB and Standard cell asic design, and wasn't overly thrilled with design work and tend to get overworked a lot. Also has the constant threat of getting laid off no matter how good you are at what you do doesn't seem like it would be hanging over your head if you were working at a Nuke Plant... and an actual 30 year career with the same company could happen... As an EE I'll make a comfortable living regardless and money is definitely not nearly as important as a happy overall life... Unless I get a PhD pretty much wherever I go I'll eventually be cranking out variations on the same design forever... So this has opened me up to considering the power industry more and more... especially when it could possibly involve living on a lake much earlier on in my career... I'll do pretty much anything to be able to be out on(/behind) my boat every day after work...

2/17/2008 10:50:01 PM

^goFigure, that was pretty much the reason I entered power.

At the end of college I could have either jumped into an industry that outsourcing is a real big fear and where you have to be cutthroat to get ahead or enter an industry where people are needed. Although I am sure one day they'll figure it out, outsourcing is not something we fear and nuclear power is so wrapped up in red tape you almost have to be a lawyer as much as an Engineer. That is worth a lot to companies who interact with the Nuclear Power industry, and could net a lot of money working for vendors who are supplying new plants.

So no, I will probably never be driving a Rolls Royce and live in the Hamptons from this job, but I will be more than comfortably able to support my wife and family.

As far as salaries go, I don't really know what Designer's make since I have not be interested in that track but EE's for the most part come in to the company around the low 50s, within a year or two make the mid 60s and then full Engineers (5 years in or PE) make mid-70s to mid-90s. Supervisors / Principal Engineers make in the low 100s. But incentives are great - the company matches dollar to dollar for up to 6%, throws 4-6% in a cash balance on top of it and you have short term incentive target of 6% coming in the door that gets adjusted to 10% after your first promotion at 2 years. Believe me, that check coming in around tax returns is nice (either in the event you didn't give the grand pumbahs enough or in my case, have enough assets together to pay of a hefty bill for an HVAC.) And you have to remember, I am earning this in South Carolina so my cost of living is relatively low.



[Edited on February 18, 2008 at 6:36 AM. Reason : yep]

2/18/2008 6:30:29 AM

Well I applied for the job... but am seriously worried that they won't consider me b/c I'm overqualified...

I tried to stress in my cover letter that I was considering for a career shift and that I really wanted to see what it was like... but when I had to list the salary from my previous 2 jobs I thought "aww shit, theres no way they are going to hire me now for a position they are trying to pay an undergrad $14/hr to do"...

I dunno, I guess I'll find out soon enough

btw salaries in the design industry... start high50's-mid 60's, level 2 mid 60's-70's, level 3 high 60's-90's , level 4 80's-100's, level 5 (most people w/o PhD's won't ever hit) 100-140's RTPish numbers, not exact, but what I've seen recently..

[Edited on February 18, 2008 at 9:40 AM. Reason : salary comparison... I don't mind making $10k less if it means more personal time]

2/18/2008 9:37:20 AM

^dude you are beyond over qualified.....

by the way I think Rodger has officially just shit a brick

[Edited on February 18, 2008 at 11:54 AM. Reason : .]

2/18/2008 11:51:46 AM

I'm only considering options... and I do like the challenge of design work, it's exciting to figure out how to make something work... and I do like transistor design...

but realizing that even that will get old after a while has made me start thinking about my career after 10years and if I'm going to be happy and such... not to mention I'm also getting old

I dunno, I just worry about being overworked and then getting laid off when the industry dips

I never should have said "wasn't overly thrilled with design work" what I meant was I was thrilled shitless to be doing design work when I first got the job... and it was fun up until the point that it started being the same thing over and over again (after I was an actual engineer, not a co-op)

[Edited on February 18, 2008 at 1:23 PM. Reason : I never should have said "and wasn't overly thrilled with design work"]

2/18/2008 1:20:13 PM

go figure

2/18/2008 1:34:25 PM

thanks for all the info.

How did you get into design? I've tried and the job description fits, but when I get there, I end up testing software or programming of somesort and I know as a coop we should not expect much, but still.

constovich, I think i'm working with the Reactor/Electrical Plant Engineering Section.

2/18/2008 7:23:56 PM

Quote :

"and it was fun up until the point that it started being the same thing over and over again (after I was an actual engineer, not a co-op)"

But this board has 2 Ethernet ports instead of 1!

shoot me now please

2/18/2008 10:06:29 PM

The neatest thing about power is that there will inevitably be something that blows up. Period.

2/18/2008 10:32:01 PM

^^how bout we just dump a bunch of "bricks" on you

By the way are you having fun with those yet?

2/18/2008 11:33:50 PM

^

Man working on that thing is such a waste of my time....not that im working on anything else.....but still

It just goes to show you what can happen when things are blindly copied and never sanity checked.


They dont call the boost converter a ringing choke for no reason. Thing rings like a fuckin call center

2/19/2008 7:21:25 PM

take ece592a with me next semester so your not designing on whim anymore...

(as far as the duke thing goes, no phone calls yet, don't expect any... but it would be nice)

2/20/2008 12:42:43 AM

There is very little whim involved in filtering square waves.

2/20/2008 10:59:19 PM