Pros
-There are a lot of very bright people, many of whom have decades of experience in the nuclear industry. -The Westinghouse brand is well-known and respected. Most engineers are proud of the Westinghouse brand, and that pride carries over to the quality of workmanship. -For a company with "old school" roots, there is generally an open-minded an accepting attitude towards solving technical problems. Of course this varies from person to person, but for engineers who like to approach problems in theoretical space, the technical leaders are generally receptive of such methods, as long as you are able to support your methodology. It is not unusual to pull out a calculus or physics text book when working on a challenging problem. -Engineers have access to a wide variety of software and computing resources. From commercial software such as ANSYS, Inventor, and MATLAB to industry codes such as RELAP5 or GOTHIC, there is a nice array of software available for all kinds of different problems. For more demanding tasks, engineers can also get remote access to a Linux cluster, which is a great resource. For almost any software package, there seems to be someone in the company who knows it better and is willing to help you.
Cons
-Work can sometimes be slow for young engineers in the Nuclear Services business. It's often very busy, but between jobs it can be difficult to find somewhere to bill your time. That can make it difficult to maintain a high productivity rate which is necessary for a good performance review and raise. A good solution to that problem is to establish a good relationship with one of the "old guys", who always seem to have more work than they know what to do with. -With Toshiba's (parent company) increasingly aggressive goals for higher sales and profitability, there seems to be a developing trend of cost cutting and reducing perks: profit sharing program was ended in 2009, middle management seems to give undue scrutiny to insignificant expenses, training classes are often cancelled, and the tuition reimbursement program has been revised several times. -Navigating the company's robust system of policies and procedures can often be a cumbersome process. That's an industry wide thing, though, and it's just something you have to live with if you want to work in the nuclear industry.