Hi There!!

For some reason or another you are here at my homepage. So I welcome you!! My name is Jennifer, nice to meet you (this is were you e-mail me and tell me who you are)!

Here's were I yack about myself.

I'm currently a co-op/First Semester Junior attending Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Also known as Virginia Tech). I'm majoring in Civil Engineering with the hopes of building awesome buildings and bridges all over the United States! Yep, that would be me causing most of your traffic problems in the future! So be nice or I'll take two years instead of one to finish that street in front of your house! Just kidding! :) I plan to dabble in all the civil engineering fields (hydosystems, geotechnical, construction, environmental, materials, structures, and transportation) before specializing in Structural engineering in Graduate School. More than likely I'll change my mind about what I want to specialize in at Graduate School. I'm allowed to right? :o)

I have finished my Virginia Power co-op session at Surry Nuclear power plant. I really enjoyed my three sessions working there. I gained a lot of new and definitely once in a life time experiences. How many people can tell you that they been inside the Containment building of a nuclear reactor? Most people think I'm crazy that I actually wanted to put the yellow contamination suit on and go see the reactor, but hey I thought it was totally cool. It's really not as big as I thought it would be. It's really amazing how much power is being produced in the fission reaction. Now how was my experience? Well, it will most definitely NOT be forgotten! ;o) I think I spent more time dressing out in those yellow suits than I did inside containment!

For those interested in what I actually did at the Nuclear Plant I will be more than happy to talk about it in great length. I worked in a department called Station Nuclear Safety (SNS) and in this department I worked mainly with the Operating Experience (OE) Coordinator writing technical reports and conducting station awareness about a new database through making pamphlets, conducting training sessions, and making a computer based tutorial. What is OE, you ask? Basically any time there is something someone in the Nuclear Industry finds interesting they let everyone else know and then we check it out at our station to determine if this is something we should be concerned about. Now if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) or the Institute of Nuclear Power Operation (INPO) decides EVERYONE better look at a specific issue, your station better look at it really long and hard because when the NRC and INPO come to do a plant inspection you can be that is exactly what they are going to be looking at.

During my three semesters at Surry I was amazed at how many watchdog groups there were on- and off-site. Not only do they have the two main watchdog agencies (NRC and INPO) but there are MANY subgroups that make sure that everything that we say we are going to do is done. There is a department called Nuclear Oversight that checks out the paper trails, there are a couple of gentlemen in our group who conducts several audits, there are root cause teams and coordinators to check out   problems at the station, the OE group, the station deviation group, the Maintenance Rule group, and on and on. It is absolutely amazing how many departments are needed to keep a nuclear plant up and running.

I guess subconsciously when I first arrived at Surry I was half expecting Homer Simpson to be walking around the plant. I think that it was more than likely America's fear of nuclear energy playing with my psyche. Quite honestly a person like Homer Simpson would NEVER EVER be a reactor operator at an American nuclear plant. In order to become a nuclear operator, this person has to go through INTENSE training. Can you imagine going to school for 3 years, 5 days a week for 8 hours every day?! With that much training you can practically go all the way through college and almost be finished with your masters degree!! Then after all the training you then must be qualified by INPO. Then when you are certified you have to attend training every 3 weeks or so, and be requalified every year. Having attended a 80 hour course on plant systems for Engineers, I was amazed by the amount of material the Reactor Operator was required to know. Surry has a simulator that is exactly like the Unit 1 Control Room in every way, and in this simulator the training department throws different scenarios to test the entire crew. There is NEVER just one person in a Control Room. There is the Reactor Operator, the Senior Reactor Operator, the Shift Technical Advisor, and a few more people that I can't think of right now, all there to make sure that an event is taken care of correctly. The number one priority at Nuclear Plants is to protect the public above all else, and you can bet that is a definite concern (they all have families too).

Needless to say, my appreciation for the Nuclear Industry has increased tremendously during my co-op session and my awareness of nuclear ignorance with others has also increased. People actually ask me questions like: when I come home at night do I glow? I used to joke with people that I didn't have to turn my headlights on when I went home, but I noticed that people actually thought I was being serious. So now when people say that to me, I actually pause and ask them seriously if that is something they think can actually happen. If I EVER glowed when leaving the plant you can bet one thing, I'm DEAD and  in a body bag made out of concrete. In fact, I can't think of anything I could do at the plant that a situation like that could be a reality, except for jumping into the spent fuel pit or into the Reactor Cavity. Since there are guard rails everywhere you can bet that there had to be a SERIOUS fluke accident for that to happen.

If you have serious concerns with Nuclear Power by all means read up on it or if you live nearby a Nuclear Facility go take a tour of it. I don't know about other utilities but at Virginia Power's Surry and North Anna sites there are Visitor Information Centers on-site and they would be more than happy to give you a tour of the site.

Hmm...what else? One of hobbies is my Chief Medical Officer Beverly H. Crusher Web page! If you are a friend of mine then you probably know about my "little" Star Trek obsession. :) Yes, notice the quotes around little! As you can probably guess my favorite character in the Star Trek realm has to be (and is!) Dr. Beverly Crusher! I truly admire this character. I mean geez, when she was a child her mother and father died, her husband is killed in duty, her son has totally disappeared from her life (not to mention dimension!), her grandmother was killed by a parasitic ghost, and I don't even want to get into whatever is (or isn't) going on with her and Captain Jean-Luc Picard! Beverly is a strong woman who knows who she is and what she believes in! However, like anyone, she has her bad moments. True, her temper, dedication as a doctor, and her son, have gotten her in to more than her share of troubles, but that's what makes her character unique! I could go on, and on about this but hey this is supposed to be a page about me! I gave Bev her own page! Well, I guess I should say pages!!

Hmm...what else? Oh, yeah can't forget the Family Farm! Yep, gotta give them a plug also! ;o) You can check out Fairfield Farm, the Arabian Horse Farm that my grandparents own. I didn't make the web page but at least you can find out about the horses we have over here, I forget how many we have but I know that we have more than 30 horses!! Talk about a lot! We also have little terrorists running around the farm acting like they own the darn place!! Just talk to any Jack Russell Terrier owner and they will whole heartily agree with me! We have Peggy, Cheeky, Pippy, Percy, Morgan, Haley, Peekaboo, Feebie, Champ, and Minnie! Not all of them belong my parents! Yep, the first 4 belong to my grandparents, the next 5 belong to my aunt and uncle, and Minnie belong to my parents! They are the greatest dogs in the world! They'll love you to death if you know them, if you don't *beware* of the yappy dogs!! ;o)

Some people wanted to see a picture of me. So here's two! You guys are lucky I usually hide and/or run from cameras!

One with my friend Nan and her two adorable children Patches and Rebeka. I'm the one on the right with the funny smile. Don't ask me where the tan came from! hmmm...maybe it's from accidentally putting on suntan lotion instead of sunblock at the pool.

Well, so you know this is the famous or infamous (depends on how many "When are you going to put up the next batch of wave files?" letters I get in a day) Nan, who is the main reason why I have so many wave files on my Bev page. So go ahead and thank her or better yet sign her Guestbook at her web page. She loves that!

Here I am again. From Left to Right it's me, Julie, and Sheri. Friends of mine who was totally a blast  to hang-out with. Especially when there's Star Trek involved. ;o)

Julie requested that I put this in : Julie would like to remark that her arms do not begin at her waist, but that it is a trick of the camera which makes them appear that way.

Talk about paranoid! I didn't even notice it until she said something! :o)

A good friend of mine, Josh, decided to dabble a bit with my pictures. He said to me, "Here's what DrBeverly really looks like!" DrBeverly is my e-mail addy by the way. ;o)

Sure...that's what I look like when I have makeup!! LOL! Don't I wish. Thanks Josh! I got a real good laugh out of this! :o)

I want to thank you for visiting my homepage! If I think of anything else to write on here, I will of course update it. But for now I'm happy with what I've got! I've gotta have some secretes!!

Go see my school by clicking on the VT!!!!

Go Hokies!!

Date Updated :  December 04, 1999

Date Created : March 04, 1997