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John Livingston's

The Nuclear Electrical Engineer

An educational resource for electrical engineers in the nuclear power industry

Here you can find design tips on technical skills like cable and breaker sizing, short-circuit evaluations and more, PLUS deep-dive analysis of nuclear-specific topics like design basis, Tech Specs, UFSARs, and safety-related SSCs — built from primary source documents.

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Lead story · The Engineer's Life

Notes from the Outage Floor

Empty two-lane highway at dawn, white edge line running toward the horizon, faint industrial lights in the distance.

Reflections on experiences during plant outages from 2017 to 2021, documenting technical lessons and personal insights gained while working night shifts with diverse teams.

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When the Instrument Is Lying to You

From Tips of the Week, 29 February 2020, 7 November 2020, 5 December 2020 and 17 April 2021 — written across three outages. Here is a lesson I have now learned four separate times, in four different ways, and it took me those four times to notice it was the same lesson.

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What are you building with AI?

In a recent dinner conversation, I reflected on the historical significance of pepper and ice cream to highlight the drastic…

The Engineer's Life
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