Nuclear EngineerPower

If you work in a power plant, it’s possible you have the power—nuclear power—to do some damage. You also have the power to do some good.

The obvious place to start is nuclear medicine, which uses very small amounts of radioactive materials to diagnose and treat disease. (And no, patients do not light up like a Christmas tree when being treated.) If it didn’t exist, neither would PET scans, which are used to provide information about tissue or organ damage. In fact, thyroid cancer is treated with radioactive iodine, and that sort of disease remains one of the most treatable cancers in history.

So yes, there is a certain amount of “power” you receive from being a nuclear scientist but it’s not the sort of power that let’s you call up the president and ask for weekend use of Air Force One (or even get bumped up to first class at the airport for free).