Particle to Nuclear: Roll into Reactor Research?

[FortranMan]

So after sitting down with an experimental particle physicist, he told me that your basic options for employment (if you are not competitive enough to stay in particle) are medical, quant, or oil. However I'm curious if it isn't easy to just roll into Nuclear Engineering from that field and work at a reactor, or are the things you need to know with a reactor completely different from what you would know with a detector? Is it easier to roll into that field from particle than condensed matter? Is possible to roll into a research group on reactors from an experimental particle background?

 

[ParticleGrl]

Medical physics may have once been an option, but now in most states you'll need certification, which means a training program/masters in medical physics.

Anecdotally, I know a lot of high energy people (both theory and experiment) and don't know anyone who has made the transition into nuclear engineering. Using a postdoc to retrain might work, but postdocs are a competitive market, which makes it hard to land that transitional postdoc. If you want to go this route, your best bet is to start networking with the group you want to postdoc for as soon as possible.

All this begs the question- if you want to work in nuclear engineering, why not study that instead of high energy?

 

[flemmyd]

All this begs the question- if you want to work in nuclear engineering, why not study that instead of high energy?

It doesn't sound like he wants to work in nuclear engr per say. It seems he's curious about nuclear engr as a fall-back option, should his primary goals (academia?) not work out.

@the op: I can't really help you, but I do like how you say "roll into XXXX field". =]
I imagine it would be difficult to change fields via a post-doc as most fields are saturated with people who did PhDs in that field already... But I could be wrong.