MEET MICHAEL MAAS, YOUNG NUCLEAR ENGINEER

My name is Michael Maas. I’m 24 years old, and I work as an Engineer in Training at ARC Clean Technology. ARC Clean Technology is a technology company in St. John, New Brunswick, developing a 100 megawatt sodium fast reactor.

I was pretty nervous at first because going from, like, graduating into like a real professional job, I definitely had a bit of, this is the big leagues now.

The best advice I was given at the start was the secret to engineering is to stop looking for the shortcut because there is no shortcut. You can spend all kinds of time trying to figure out how to circumvent the system, but it’s typically easier to just sit down and learn what you’re working on and get a good understanding.

The thing I enjoy most, and this may sound a little boring, is the calculations. I really enjoy sitting down, and trying to solve a problem and use like, kind of math, and kind of like, science, to figure out an answer.

For someone who is in the engineering program for four years, it definitely felt like sometimes there was no light at the end of the tunnel but, I’m really glad I stuck with it, it was definitely worth it.