Nick Touran

Nuclear engineer, nuclear communicator, nuclear historian, and author*

*self-published 😎


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Nick's Bio

Nick Touran is a nuclear engineer who joined the field to help fight climate change. He has expertise in advanced nuclear reactor design, reactor development, software development, and the history of nuclear power. He spent 15 years in Seattle working at TerraPower on neutronics analysis and automation, core design, business development, and, more recently, configuration management and engineering process automation. He has a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan and is a licensed professional engineer.

He has been active in public education around nuclear since 2006 as the founder and sysadmin of whatisnuclear.com, and by speaking on radio shows and podcasts, and at local schools, coffee shops, and breweries. In 2022, he began an effort to locate, finance, and manage the digitization of numerous historical nuclear films and other materials.

He also wrote and published an intermediate-level computer book called Digital Superpowers.

Outside of nuclear he enjoys paddle boarding, walking his dog (Waffles), hiking in the Cascades, and tweeting about nuclear energy.

My Projects


Public Education about Energy

Read up on nukes.

Visit whatisnuclear.com

Software

I have a few open source projects online.

My github

Work

I enjoy designing nuclear reactors.

My work

Personal Blog

I sometimes write something in the blog.

Read Blog

Photography

I enjoy taking photos.

My Photos

Hobbies

I have lots of hobbies.

Read about them

Research and Work


Technical Skills

Reactor Methods
Diffusion, depletion, stability, kinetics, perturbation theory, nuclear data uncertainty, finance, etc.
System Design
Multiobjective optimization, configuration management, reactor history, project management, non-linear regression
Reactor Codes
ARMI, DIF3D, MC2, REBUS, MCNP
Programming
Python, Django, Javascript, Vue3, git, MPI, HTML, Perl, LaTeX, Jenkins, C/C++, FORTRAN
Computers
Linux, vim, Home Assistant, Apache, graphviz, pandoc, SQL, Dovecot, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, ESP8266, Jekyll, A+ Certified Technician :)

Writing

Appearances


I really enjoy discussing with people about nuclear energy and other things. If you want to invite me for a discussion, etc., contact me.

Hobbies & non-Nuclear Interests


Ham radio
Amateur Extra, digital, SDR, GNURadio, portable & remote operation
Home automation
Contributor to Home-Assistant platform, blogger, creator of infopanel.
Motorcycles
Riding, maintenance
Outdoors
Soccer, skiing, boating, hiking, camping, scuba diving
Reading
History, literature, politics, anything
Electronics
Late 1800s physics, oscilloscopes, vacuum pumps, high voltage
Music
Classic rock, electronic dance, rap, country, bass guitar, MIDI
Photography
Quadcopter photography, regular photography
Nick Touran with
                        dog
Nick Touran without dog
Nick in lab coat.