Framatome's teams design, build, and service nuclear reactors. For more than 60 years, the company has been present at every stage of the process on all types of reactor technologies.

As part of my university placement year, I joined Framatome's primary reactor systems team at their site in Erlangen, Germany.

I was attached to R&D, working on a project to test the suitability of a new type of level probe for use within Framatome's nuclear reactors.

The project initially involved installing an experimental level probe on the quarter-scale reactor at Framatome's site in Erlangen. This enabled us to start analyzing the probe's performance during reactor testing phases.

My initial responsibilities were:

• Building software to interface the probe with the I&C of the reactor systems.
• Building an application to monitor probe output and provide visualization for engineers.
• Providing a long-term data storage solution for ongoing data capture.

The scope of the project increased when we ran into reading problems due to electrical noise interference from the reactor. Writing software filters to compensate for the noise formed a significant part of my project work throughout the year.

This has been one of my favorite projects. The team of German engineers I worked with were brilliant; I learned a lot from them. The work was challenging, exciting and I found that my software added real value.