Beating The Odds To Become First Female Chief Nuclear Officer
by The Daily Eye Team May 19 2014, 11:29 am Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 55 secsThere are nine men for every woman in nuclear engineering. NPR’s Rachel Martin talks to Maria Korsnick, the first female chief nuclear officer in the U.S., about her experience as a woman in the industry. So that’s the picture in academic science, but we wanted to get a sense of whether the issues are similar in the science industries away from academia. To talk about that, we called on one of the highest-ranking women in the nuclear field. Her name is Maria Korsnick. She works for Exelon Nuclear, one of the largest power-generating companies in the U.S. She was the first woman in this country to hold the title of chief nuclear officer. I started by asking her to just explain what that title means. MARIA KORSNICK: I am responsible for five operating nuclear power plants. And as chief nuclear officer, I am the single point of contact, if you will, for the day-to-day operation of those plants as well as the strategic plans to continue having them run safely for years to come.