Contractors share Paducah job opportunities with students

Taking part: Paducah Site contractors Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership, Swift & Staley Inc., and Mid-America Conversion Services, along with United Steel Workers Local 550, participated in the event.

What was there: Representatives from the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management gave hands-on presentations about jobs, ranging from engineering and science to the production of documents to more than 800 middle school students from across the region.

“Events allowing us to showcase the career opportunities at the site casts an early recruiting net in a student’s academic career,” said Joel Bradburne, Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO). “PPPO and our contractors are committed to outreach efforts with local schools hoping to cultivate tomorrow’s talent.”

About Paducah: In 1950, the Atomic Energy Commission, a predecessor agency to the DOE, selected a 3,556-acre tract of government-owned land near Paducah, Ky., as the location to construct a second gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment plant (GDP) to support U.S. national security needs.

The GDP enriched uranium ran from 1952 to 2013 and was the last government-owned uranium enrichment facility operating in the United States. It produced low-enriched uranium originally as feedstock for nuclear weapons materials and later for commercial nuclear power plants.