Women in Nuclear - WiN Canada

Diane is a Lead Designer on six of the fixed scope projects as part of the Refurbishment contract with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) at Point Lepreau Generating Station (PLGS). In her role as design lead, she is the liaison between AECL designers and station personnel. This involves advancing the design through the station’s design process and ensuring that the design is acceptable and meets the operational requirements. Although the field work is mostly complete on all of her projects, she is currently working on design close outs, which involves verifying that the documentation reflects the actual plant conditions.

Before working as a design lead, Diane started her career with NB Power in 2001 in the Operational Safety Group in the Nuclear Safety Unit. She was involved in outage heat sink planning, requesting approvals from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), reviewing events for reportability to the CNSC and revising the station’s Operating Policies and Principles. After graduating from University, Diane worked for McCain Foods Limited as an Environmental Engineer for the Canadian plants.

Diane always knew growing up that she was going to be an engineer.  Her strong influence from her father as an engineer gave her great guidance and encouragement in this area. Diane graduated from the Chemical Engineering program in 1998 at the University of New Brunswick (UNB), Fredericton. She has also taken several Technical and Operations courses through the station’s training department. In 2008, Diane completed her qualifications to become a lead designer as part of the station’s Technical Support Personnel Qualification and Training Program.

Diane loves the social aspect of her work as she is constantly dealing with various personnel. Her keenness for learning the technical details and applying them to a particular situation is very gratifying. Working at a nuclear power plant is in her mind an “excellent place to grow as a technical person because you are constantly learning and stretching your abilities. The environment has such variety and complexity.” For Diane, “the satisfaction of knowing you’re achieving the greater goal of refurbishing the plant in a quality manner by verifying the design documentation is incredibly motivating.”

The WiN organization to Diane is seen as a great opportunity to meet and network with other women while sharing work and personal experiences.

As created January 22, 2010.