Roll_SK

Fuck no.

I would suggest that you try a lot of different things and learn what you love. In my career I have worked with operations at a mill keeping things running, as a construction manager running crews building stuff, and as a consultant working with a large team to generate construction drawings for the contractors. Try different things and go with your passion. You may not even end up doing engineering work in the end. For example, I am now a project manager and do no design at all. But my experience with the design and construction side of things really helps make that job a good fit for me. I love field work and I love working with trades.

Also, keep your damned mouth shut and ask a lot of questions. A lot of new engineers have the bad habit of thinking they know stuff. The reality is that a trades person with 20 years on the tools will hand you your ass at a lot of design stuff. Learn to respect the trades and ask them for advice when working on designs. Learn to get value out of everyone you work with no matter what their standing is in the company. The IT guy may not have your fancy degree but if you treat them with respect they will save your ass. Same goes for everyone else. Field work is a great way to see it all come together and to get a feel for what you're actually building. However, if hard hats and work boots aren't your thing, office work can be as fun if that's your thing. Really, you have to try a lot and be open to new things every step of the way. I will fully tell you that in my 10 years every single project and in fact every single day has something new to offer. Also, avoid putting in extra time as long as possible. You have the rest of your career to work weekends so don't do it right out of the gate if you don't have to. Once down the path to extra hours it's very hard to back off again.

The dangers are typical of any industrial mine or chemical plant plus invisible death rays. The most dangerous radiation comes from the raw ore which can be pretty high in gamma and has the added risk of being airborn (dust from crushing etc). You also have to be careful of Radon progeny aka the decay of radon as it comes off of basically everything in the process and if radon decays into it's progeny in your lungs it can cause damage due to alpha and beta release. Other then that, it's norther Saskatchewan so you have to watch out for bears, wolves and other wildlife. In the uranium milling process we use some pretty nasty stuff like 95% sulfuric acid for leaching and 75% hydrogen peroxide which will light anything organic on fire. And of course in any underground mines you have to watch out for things falling on you from above.

A yellowcake mill is a chemical plant that purifies and concentrates uranium from ore. Basically you grind up raw uranium ore, use acids and reagents to liberate uranium ions into solution, get rid of the rock, then use typically solvent extraction to concentrate the amount of uranium in that solution. Then with some chemical wizardry you can precipitate that uranium out into uranium oxide, which is then heated to about 700C and cooked into a fine yellow powder we know as yellowcake. Yellowcake can then be further processed into nuclear fuel at facilities such as Port Hope.

Yup, unless you're going into R&D or grad studies. You will need very little of the high end stuff.