A real hands on approach is easy, every plant refuels a section of its fuel about every 18-24 months, they hire on temporary employees to help out on the maintenance work. That helps keep the dose levels down on the regular crews. I've worked three refueling outages as a temporary employee in my life, and each one was completely different. When I was 18 they payed me around 16.50 an hour for 6 months at 72-84 hours a week. Full time and Union guys make a lot more than that. Not to mention the insane amount of overtime you will have. Lots of cash in a business that boils water with a fuel that last for about 6 years.
If starting from rock bottom isn't an approach you want to take, our plant offers a co-op nuclear engineering degree at a local community college. Last I heard it could be completed in under two years, with summer on the job training at the plant. I know there other programs at other plants across the country, I would suggest you find a plant near you, or in an area you prefer, and contact them about any co-op programs they have. Our plant in particular offers to pay all tuition costs, and seeing as how you get paid to train during summers, you actually will make money through out your schooling.
As far as what type of work you would be doing, that truly is a decision you'd have to make. Between the running of the plant, and the refueling of the plant, you'd be hard pressed to find a job or trade that is not performed.
A few of our departments include: Maintenance, they do just that, maintenance. Which at a nuclear plant, usually consists of months of peaceful work, mixed with days of extreme excitement. If you're mechanically based, or just love getting dirty with pumps and pipes and dirt and things like that, it would be the Dept for you.
Then we have Operators, there are a few classes of operators. These are the guys who physically operate the plant. The majority of operators are constantly walking all throughout the various buildings, checking all different kinds of gauges and things that need checked. You get to see parts of the plant very few others do. Operators at this level need a lot of math and physics education. This is probably the best field to get into fresh out of college. Plenty of room for promotion. All the way up to control room operator. These guys work for some months, then train on a mock up reactor control room for some months. Constant training and requalification. If you wanted to challenge yourself, that'd be the job to do it! I've only met a few of those fellas in my days, they don't see sunlight much.
But operations is probably the best job in the plant as far as pay and adventure go.
Then you have your Radiation Protection departments. Every plant loves to have its own names for all these jobs, Radiation Protection was formerly known as Health Services, then changed to Health Physics. These gentlemen and women are the ones who survey and monitor all things radiation. Whether it be monitoring levels of radiation in preparation for a job, or helping maintain a contamination free zone, down to monitoring dose and contamination on workers. If radiation is something that truly captivates you, this is a neat job. Radiation Protection pretty much sums up the title, protect from radiation.
Ok, this is going on a little long, you get the idea. Chemistry is another department, there's a few others, but those are the major ones up there. Of course, Security is a major one, but trust me, stay out of that line of work and keep an eye on those guys
As far as schooling goes, I could get you some recommended courses I'm sure most schools would have. Other than that, focuses on electrical, physics, and math at higher levels would almost certainly guarantee you a great job at almost any reactor in the country.
A fresh nuclear engineering graduate would certainly not be babysitting or researching, however soaking up some dose is a possibility...
They would put you to work immediately, a nuclear power plant is a very large and very complicated structure, and the only way to learn it is to work it. It still boggles my mind that all we're doing is boiling water to make steam, yet somehow we have made that very very complicated
Just a final note, I have known workers who literally built the plants, got hired on, and have worked there for over 20 years, and no side effect of radiation yet. The latest medical research I read suggested that the amount of radiation we receive could actually help PREVENT cancers. The amount of radiation we are allowed to receive at the plant in one full year, is not even remotely close to the amount that would do anything to you, if received all at once.
We are much much more than Homer Simpson, working at a plant is a good mix of firefighter, military, scientist, and adventurer.
p.s.
here's a quick summary of Operators
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos227.htm#nature
