Summer Internships              | 1 | 2 |

Framatome ANP

Tyler S. Ellis

Throughout my undergraduate and graduate career I have sought to expand my horizons by experiencing as many aspects of the nuclear engineering field as possible. My three month summer stage (internship) with Framatome ANP in Lyon, France was truly invaluable to my nuclear engineering education because not only did I gain a significant amount of technical and managerial knowledge, I also gained a deeper cultural understanding.

I knew right off of the bat that this was going to be an exceptionally rewarding internship because instead of receiving the plug-and-chug kind of work that interns are typically given, my advisor assigned me the high-level responsibility of drafting plant design requirements for an advanced nuclear reactor concept. The importance of this project allowed me to attend design meetings in Paris where I had the opportunity to meet and work with top-notch engineers from all over the world.

Besides the expansion of my technical knowledgebase, this project also allowed me to learn about a project management approach -- systems engineering design -- that I've frequently heard about but had never actually seen implemented. This approach provides an effective mechanism by which to tackle the problems of managing a large, international, multi-disciplinary project. In all of my research projects at MIT, the groups tended to be small enough such that communication was as rapid as it was lucid. However when working with a large international team, the systems engineering design approach provided an effective organizational scheme to keep each of the project groups on the same page. This experience equipped me with both the language and the tools by which to overcome such barriers as differing definitions of technical terminology and varied regulatory requirements.

I also gained a lot culturally; the complete immersion in the French culture allowed me to learn far more than can ever be taught in a classroom or book. For example, one can easily read all about the Arc de Triomphe in a historical text but I don't think it can ever be truly experienced until one actually stands at its base and gazes up at hundreds of years of French history. In addition to learning about a new culture, the total immersion moreover allowed me to gain a better appreciation for my own vis à vis recognition of different American cultural nuances that I previously hadn't given a second thought to.

I'm convinced that the technologies and techniques I learned working alongside Framatome engineers this summer will serve me well in my future career with the nuclear power industry. I am deeply indebted to both CANES as well as everyone at AREVA for making this incredibly valuable experience possible.