Will AI replace Nuclear Engineers?
AI reaches a large part of this job’s work.
48/100
High exposure
More exposed to AI than 74% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 71% of the work
What the job involves
Conduct research on nuclear engineering projects or apply principles and theory of nuclear science to problems concerned with release, control, and use of nuclear energy and nuclear waste disposal.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(14)
- Monitor nuclear facility operations to identify any design, construction, or operation practices that violate safety regulations and laws or could jeopardize safe operations.
- Prepare technical reports of findings or recommendations, based on synthesized analyses of test results.
- Prepare environmental impact statements, reports, or presentations for regulatory or other agencies.
- Design or develop nuclear equipment, such as reactor cores, radiation shielding, or associated instrumentation or control mechanisms.
- Develop or contribute to the development of plans to remediate or restore environments affected by nuclear radiation, such as waste disposal sites.
and 9 more
Out of reach(6)
- Initiate corrective actions or order plant shutdowns in emergency situations.
- Direct operating or maintenance activities of nuclear power plants to ensure efficiency and conformity to safety standards.
- Examine accidents to obtain data for use in design of preventive measures.
- Consult with other scientists to determine parameters of experimentation or suitability of analytical models.
- Conduct tests of nuclear fuel behavior and cycles or performance of nuclear machinery and equipment to optimize performance of existing plants.
and 1 more
Also called
Nuclear Engineer · Radiological Engineer · Reactor Engineer · Nuclear Equipment Design Engineer · Engineer · Nuclear Safety Engineer · Nuclear Steam Supply System Engineer (NSSS Engineer) · Atomic Process Engineer
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics