Workforce

Jasmina Vujic

Nuclear energy is uniquely poised to create reliable, carbon-free, domestically produced baseload electricity to meet our rising energy demands. It must be a central part of our energy mix in order to have sustainable development, competitiveness, and independence as global energy demand continues to grow. There is also a growing need to address national security challenges like nuclear proliferation resistance and nuclear threat reduction. The fastest and most efficient way to realize the full potential of nuclear power and address nuclear security challenges is to draw on the strengths of our universities, national laboratories, and industry.

U.S. universities are well equipped to be the preeminent providers of nuclear science and engineering education at the undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate levels and to perform world-class research across all nuclear science and engineering disciplines, utilizing the resources available across the higher education network and through unique national laboratory partnerships.

Nick Touran

I got into nuclear engineering when I realized I could apply my passion for computers to the critical human challenge of energy. After training, I spent the past 13-plus years building automated and integrated engineering analysis tools for the efficient design/licensing of advanced nuclear reactors. Given what I’ve seen, I expect that modern high-level programming languages and data systems will continue to enable new efficiencies in analysis, configuration management, work planning, procurement, training, compliance, and execution in operations. The magnitude of potential impact laid out, for example, in Information Technology for Nuclear Power Plant Configuration Management (IAEA-TECDOC-1651) is well within reach. These impacts are identical to those promised by digital twins. Achieving these goals will require more information workers in the offices of nuclear vendors and operators to develop sophisticated skills in software engineering, database administration, statistics, and business analytics. Additionally, decision makers must be better trained to best understand and choose specialized IT systems and software.

The United States is supporting a junior professional officer (JPO) position in the International Atomic Energy Association to work on spent nuclear fuel management. The role is for an associate project officer-spent fuel management, who will be based in Vienna, Austria, and work under the direct supervision of the technical leader of the spent fuel management team in the Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology.

The United Kingdom’s nuclear renaissance

The United Kingdom’s nuclear industry is expanding, with the U.K. government committed to supporting the build of more civil nuclear power plants (deployments up to 24 GW by 2050)¹ while also undertaking large-scale decommissioning work in parallel.² The defense sector is experiencing growth with the decommissioning, operation, and new build of submarines, plus managing the U.K.’s deterrent.³ Although the civil and defense programs are separate, they draw on the same group of skills and people.

Steven Arndt
president@ans.org

One of the duties of the ANS president is to visit with American Nuclear Society student sections. As some of you know, I have been doing this both in person and virtually. Although meeting via Zoom and other platforms is easier in terms of scheduling and travel, there is nothing like being able to interact face to face. Visiting student sections in person has been the highlight of my time as president. As I have stated on several occasions, the enthusiasm and excitement I have seen among the nuclear engineering students in the U.S. is nothing short of exhilarating!

When we think of workforce planning, those of us who have had long associations with universities naturally think first of undergraduate and graduate nuclear engineering programs at our universities, but this is of course only a part of the overall solution. The first—and in many ways the most important—part of workforce development is getting our nation’s youth excited about nuclear science and technology.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

This month’s Nuclear News focuses on the challenges of building and maintaining a strong, productive nuclear technology workforce. While my sense is that U.S. nuclear is in significant growth mode, I’ve made a habit of asking our Utility Working Conference and Winter Meeting exhibitors, “What is the most significant challenge you face today?” The answer is almost always some form of “finding good talent.” Conversely, ask any nuclear engineering student about their career prospects, and you will likely get a confident response, so it seems that multiple offers are becoming the norm in the nuclear tech employment market.

Of course, empirical data is harder to come by. A 2019 study by the National Association of State Energy Officials and the Energy Futures Initiative found 60,916 workers employed in U.S. nuclear power generation, with another 9,406 employed in the nuclear fuels sector. But we still lack good, publicly available numbers for national labs, universities, and suppliers, as well as any job focused on nonnuclear applications of nuclear technology.

The nuclear community is undergoing a moment of unprecedented interest and growth not seen in decades. The passage of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act are providing a multitude of new funding opportunities for the nuclear community, and not just the current fleet. A mix of technologies and reactor types are being evaluated and deployed, with Vogtle Units 3 and 4 coming on line later this year, the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Projects of X-energy and TerraPower, and NuScale’s work with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems to build a first-of-a-kind small modular reactor, making this is an exciting time to join the nuclear workforce.