Posted: March 13, 2008
Editor’s note: This story by Jane Von Bergen appeared March 9 in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Forgive the pun, but engineer Jennifer Lee, 25, radiates
enthusiasm when she talks about her job at the Limerick nuclear plant near
Pottstown.
Now, if only the industry could find 90,000 more like
her, in all jobs -- from maintenance technician to senior reactor operator,
from union electrician to experienced engineer, from pipe fitter to regulator.
That’s because, at a time when oil prices are rising, the
nuclear industry is experiencing a startling, largely unheralded rejuvenation.
But there is a tremendous shortage of future workers. The
current average age is just north of 48, and one in three nuclear workers will
be eligible to retire in 2012, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a
trade group.
“We will not have enough people in two years or three
years,” said Charles Goodnight, founder of Goodnight Consulting Inc., a Vienna,
Va., nuclear-consulting firm specializing in staffing.
This is not just the standard demographic bye-bye baby
boomer blues. The nuclear industry’s situation is unique, based primarily on
the fact that after the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in 1979, the
industry seemed doomed, and hiring ground to a halt.
Now, the industry is scrambling to catch up -- and it
must work fast. So far, 84 reactors have received or are applying for 20-year
operating-license extensions. Even more astounding, given the once-virulent
antinuclear sentiment, are plans to build 22 reactors, including one in Salem County.
That not only means more work at the plants, but also at
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and at companies that supply
nuclear-power facilities. The NRC has hired 350 in the last two years,
Goodnight said.
“The vendors who are going to be needed to build the
plants, like Westinghouse, are all hiring,” he said. “Other countries are
starting construction. So you can work for Westinghouse or GE and get
international experience.”
Sounds like a talent war going nuclear.
“We’re in an aggressive hiring mode,” said Anndria
Gaerity, director of nuclear development at Public Service Enterprise Group
Inc., which operates three reactors at Salem and Hope Creek in Salem County and
is investigating adding a fourth.
How aggressive?
Two years ago, her staffing team consisted of two
in-house recruiters. Now, she has four in-house recruiters, two full-time
temporary recruiters on contract and 10 outside recruiting companies on
retainer.
Hiring managers are getting sensitivity training in how
to sell the plants to potential applicants. “We want to make them feel they
will be getting very valuable experience here,” she said.
That does not count the sporting events, hockey games “and
making sure the recruits get time and exposure to team leaders and management,”
Gaerity said. By 2013, 29 percent of the plants’ current workforce will be
eligible for retirement.
Exelon Nuclear figures it will need to hire 2,500 people
in the next five years, over-hiring by 15 percent each year. It estimates that
15 percent of its current workforce will be eligible for retirement.
To bring in people like Jennifer Lee, who is now pursuing
a master’s degree in business administration on Exelon’s dime, the company
treated her and her fellow engineering candidates to a night-behind-the-scenes
at the Franklin Institute.
And they pay her a lot of money.
An inexperienced engineer can start at $60,000, but pay
rises steeply with any type of relevant internship, said Neal Coy, Exelon’s
senior recruiter.
Craft people -- electricians and mechanics -- can figure
on earning more than $43,000, with excellent benefits to start. And unlicensed
operators, the entry-level position for key reactor operations, will earn close
to $50,000 a year while being trained.
“We’ve started a pipeline program,” Coy said. “We’re
over-hiring now, based on anticipated retirements.”
To find these people, nuclear-reactor companies are
partnering with colleges and trade schools. In 2006, PPL Corp. established a
nuclear-technical program at Luzerne County Community College to funnel workers
to its reactors at Berwick.
How did the industry get so short-staffed?
College nuclear-engineering programs grew to match the
demand for work at nuclear plants, which were under construction in the 1960s,
explained Jack S. Brenizer Jr., chairman of Pennsylvania State University’s
nuclear-engineering program, one of the most well-known in the nation.
Activity peaked by 1979, with almost all the reactors
active and fully staffed.
“At that point, Three Mile Island occurred,” he said. “Many
people thought we weren’t going to have any nuclear-power plants. They are too
risky, too expensive, and then they’d go down the laundry list of concerns.”
The incident -- a core meltdown at the plant on the
Susquehanna River in south-central Pennsylvania -- exacerbated other market
conditions.
“The competition was very strong from coal and natural
gas,” and nuclear plants are very expensive to build, Brenizer said.
Given the bad publicity from Three Mile Island and the
economic factors, it looked as if no new plants would be built and those
already operating would just finish out their licenses. Universities shut their
nuclear-engineering programs.
“If you were in nuclear engineering 20 years ago, you
were constantly defending yourself,” Brenizer said. “We used to call it the ‘n’
word.”
In 2000, Penn State, one of the largest programs,
graduated just six nuclear engineers.
Meanwhile, nuclear plants did not need to recruit heavily
even to fill openings created by normal attrition. That’s because overall
staffing levels declined as operators of nuclear reactors learned to generate
more power with fewer people, Goodnight said.
What changed?
In 2000, the first license renewals were granted to two
reactors on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. And with those first renewals, an
industry that had been about to die suddenly showed signs of life.
Last year, Penn State graduated 44 nuclear engineers. “All
of our students who want a job in nuclear engineering have one,” Brenizer said.
“We have 100 percent placement.”
Public sentiment also has shifted.
“I think the stigma has faded away, in spite of Homer
Simpson,” Goodnight said. “TMI is a distant memory. From an industry
perspective, it was a generation ago.”
Michael Vincenzini, 27, of Royersford, was not even born
when TMI’s near meltdown occurred. To him, nuclear energy is not an
environmental scourge evoked by images of Three Mile Island or the 1986
breakdown of the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine.
“It’s a green source of energy,” he said, taking a break
from his classes at Limerick, where he is studying to be an unlicensed
operator.
“Look at the oil prices now. Look at the pollution from
nonrenewable fuels,” he said. “These plants are so much better regulated. There
are backup systems to the backup systems.”
To recruit folks such as Lee and Vincenzini, it helps to
point out that nuclear power cannot be outsourced overseas. “Electricity has to
be manufactured here,” said Coy, the Exelon recruiter.
But the biggest sell, besides the money, is a chance for
a quick climb up the ladder.
Nick Carroll, 23, graduated from college in 2006 with a
bachelor’s degree in physics and no job. “I was working for $10 an hour at Best
Buy.” He sent out 2,000 resumes -- one to every company listed on a physics
professional organization’s Web site.
“I only got two back -- and both were for operators in a
nuclear-power plant,” he said. Exelon flew him out from Idaho for an interview.
“There is so much tribal knowledge here that is going to
leave,” he said. “We have people who have been here 20 years and people who
have been here two years.
“It’s a challenge, but that’s also where the growth is,”
he said. “It’s the growth that interested me.”