The Worst Jobs in Science: The Sequel

[Walt. V Kopitov]

The Worst Jobs in Science: The Sequel (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,20967,713471,00.html)

• Anal-Wart Researcher

That is one nasty job. Plenty more at the site. You think your job is tough.

[elder999]

K-25 Demolition Worker (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,20967,713458,00.html)



Now Clark and his tortured coworkers are, in a meticulous and sweat-drenched fashion, bringing it down.

“You start off wearing scrubs and a paper suit,” Clark says, “two pairs of latex gloves, skullcap and rubber boots, a hard hat and a full-face respirator with dual filters. At the end of the day, you scrub and shower so you doN’t contaminate your car, your family or anything else.”


What a cry baby- lame, wimp sniveling punk!:rolleyes:

[Lee Marsh]

A buddy of mine from Ga. Tech is a nuclear engineer and works for Raytheon. He spends a lot of time de-constructing nuclear devices of one kind or another, even a power plant or two. He is presently looking for work outside the nuclear field. He has a wife now and a kid on the way. He is worried about the cumulative effects of his exposure.

[Shitoryu Dude]

The former head of the submarine nuclear power plant team at the Navy base in Bremerton took a career switch to being the head groundskeeper.

Not only is it less stress, he told me it pays better.

:beer:

[elder999]

Originally posted by Lee Marsh
A buddy of mine from Ga. Tech is a nuclear engineer and works for Raytheon. He spends a lot of time de-constructing nuclear devices of one kind or another, even a power plant or two. He is presently looking for work outside the nuclear field. He has a wife now and a kid on the way. He is worried about the cumulative effects of his exposure.

I laugh at his pitiful power plant decomissioning, and sneer at the wimpy cumulative effects of exposure (which, after all, should be limited to less than 5 R per year-somewhat less than one gets living in Denver....):laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

[Lee Marsh]

Thinking back to Rhodes' book on the A-bomb, a lot of the people on those projects died of leukemia in their 50's, and many got radiation burns. In many ways, for all their brilliance and ingenuity, they really didn't know what they had...or as we say around here, "They didn't know what they were messin' with."

[elder999]

Originally posted by Lee Marsh
Thinking back to Rhodes' book on the A-bomb, a lot of the people on those projects died of leukemia in their 50's, and many got radiation burns. In many ways, for all their brilliance and ingenuity, they really didn't know what they had...or as we say around here, "They didn't know what they were messin' with."

Naaah. Barring the catastrophic incidents and exposures (radiation burns)that took place, the incidence of cancer in nuclear workers across the history of there being such a thing is less than 1% above the mean incidence for the general populace-statistically significant and in all probability directly related to radiation and contamination exposure, but not on an individual basis. In other words, just because you get cancer and work with radiation, doesn't necessarily mean that one is related to the other, and it can't-except for a few specific somatic types-be directly attributed to exposure. This includes the early workers-though quite a few (hundreds to something less than 5,000) who were directly exposed to fallout from atmospheric testing,. and the thousands who mined uranium are not included in those statistics, and there was a much higher incidence of cancer type illnesses for them-though the government has tried to continue to deny any direct link between the two. The 5R per yeare limitation on occupational exposure did come from those early exposures, though. and it keeps getting lowered (when I started doing this kind of work it was 7R/year, but that didn't last long-airline pilots get about 7R per year from cosmic rays, though, so.....)

I know-believe me; I do have to wonder every time a co-worker has gotten cancer, even though those occurences have been well within the statistical mean-in other words, I probably have seen just as many co-workers get cancers as you have in a 20 year career, and many of them were distinctly not from radiation.

The reason I sneer at the sniveling demolition worker is that he's really only complaining about a lack of comfort that goes with that type of work-a lack of comfort I deal with on a fairly regular basis, and under much more stressful circumstances. It doesn't make his job any easier, but he's really just doing construction work, isn't he? I mean,it's not as though he's studying anal warts or defusing bombs....:rolleyes:

[Lee Marsh]

Aaron, I can't wait to give him some crap and tell him to quit bitching. Why, Hell, every time I design a power grid or a sub-station I run the risk of being electrocuted...well, virtually, anyway:D

[Rogier]

that's all nothing... I'm an accountant (not science related, but hey... it's a job)

Since I started working in accounting:

- Got staples in both my thumbs (pulled them out with my teeth)
- Got a hole in my foot by stepping on an open ordner (was walking around on my socks)
- Ran into a door
- Got stuck in the elevator for 1,5 hours
- Had foodpoisoning from the cafeteria
- Had dozens of papercuts

and the list goes on and on. Nuclear power is nothing... live life to the edge... become an accountant

[Lee Marsh]

You heard about the constipated accountant didn't you? He worked it out with a pencil.:D

[Chrono]

In my two geology classes we had field trips and we would often have to walk for quite a while and go in the woods to look at rocks. The first one I went to it was too cold to write on the sheet he gave us and all the guys in our group got failing grades. The last one we went on we basically went hiking in the woods. The one dude in front of me slid on some mud and got it all over his backside.

[Peter H.]

Guy who had to feed the Ebola infected Rhesus's. Pretty bad job.

Of course, the guy who cleaned the poop from the gentically engineered rat's cages had a pretty shitty job too.

Russ was the night caretaker where I worked. One night, a babboon had gotten a hold of a yard of metal pipe and was beating the snot out of every other babboon who tried to climb the rock pie into the Donkey Kong position. Babboon after babboon was having thier skull crakced and sent tumbling down the rock pile.

I stop Russ, who had only one eye. I ask him if we should do something, considering that our job was to protect the animals. He looks at me with his one eye and sasy, "Do you wanna be the one to go in there?"

The guy on the morning crew who had to go in there had the worst job that day.