Another Look at Work Force Issues

Late on Friday afternoon, The WSJ Energy Blog picked up on an issue we've been writing about for some time now, namely the challenges ahead for the industry as it faces of wave of retirements inside the nuclear work force:

The shrinking nuclear power workforce is “a big issue,” that the industry would have to resolve even if new nuclear plants weren’t on the drawing board, said Randy Hutchinson, senior vice president of nuclear business development for New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. “Building new plants, to some extent, compounds that problem,” he said.

About 27% of the nation’s nuclear power employees, about 15,600 workers, will be eligible to retire in the next five years, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s Washington lobbying group. Nearly half U.S. nuclear power employees are older than 47, and less than 8% are younger than 32, according to the NEI. Meanwhile, the number of university nuclear engineering programs has declined in the U.S. to about 29 from 65 in 1980, turning out fewer nuclear engineers.

But while the facts in the post might all be true -- after all, they came from NEI -- it still doesn't tell the whole story.

For starters, I suggest you read these two fact sheets produced by NEI:

Nuclear Energy Industry Initiatives Target Looming Shortage of Skilled Workers
Expanded Manufacturing Capacity Needed To Support New Nuclear Plant Construction

And as NRC Chairman Dale Klein said in a speech earlier this year, his agency is well aware of the challenge as well -- one that isn't limited to utilities.

Finally, be sure to check out our Careers and Education section at NEI.org.

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A Design Team Pictures the Future of Nuclear Energy

For more than 100 years, the shape and location of human settlements has been defined in large part by energy and water. Cities grew up near natural resources like hydropower, and near water for agricultural, industrial and household use.

So what would the world look like with a new generation of small nuclear reactors that could provide abundant, clean energy for electricity, water pumping and desalination and industrial processes?

Hard to say with precision, but Third Way, the non-partisan think tank, asked the design team at the Washington, D.C. office of Gensler & Associates, an architecture and interior design firm that specializes in sustainable projects like a complex that houses the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The talented designers saw a blooming desert and a cozy arctic village, an old urban mill re-purposed as an energy producer, a data center that integrates solar panels on its sprawling flat roofs, a naval base and a humming transit hub.

In the converted mill, high temperat…

Sneak Peek

There's an invisible force powering and propelling our way of life.
It's all around us. You can't feel it. Smell it. Or taste it.
But it's there all the same. And if you look close enough, you can see all the amazing and wondrous things it does.
It not only powers our cities and towns.
And all the high-tech things we love.
It gives us the power to invent.
To explore.
To discover.
To create advanced technologies.
This invisible force creates jobs out of thin air.
It adds billions to our economy.
It's on even when we're not.
And stays on no matter what Mother Nature throws at it.
This invisible force takes us to the outer reaches of outer space.
And to the very depths of our oceans.
It brings us together. And it makes us better.
And most importantly, it has the power to do all this in our lifetime while barely leaving a trace.
Some people might say it's kind of unbelievable.
They wonder, what is this new power that does all these extraordinary things?

Seeing the Light on Nuclear Energy

If you think that there is plenty of electricity, that the air is clean enough and that nuclear power is a just one among many options for meeting human needs, then you are probably over-focused on the United States or Western Europe. Even then, you’d be wrong.

That’s the idea at the heart of a new book, “Seeing the Light: The Case for Nuclear Power in the 21st Century,” by Scott L. Montgomery, a geoscientist and energy expert, and Thomas Graham Jr., a retired ambassador and arms control expert.

Billions of people live in energy poverty, they write, and even those who don’t, those who live in places where there is always an electric outlet or a light switch handy, we need to unmake the last 200 years of energy history, and move to non-carbon sources. Energy is integral to our lives but the authors cite a World Health Organization estimate that more than 6.5 million people die each year from air pollution. In addition, they say, the global climate is heading for ruinous instability. E…

NEI Nuclear Notes

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