A jobs boom is shaking nuclear industry

Forgive the pun, but engineer Jennifer Lee, 25, radiates enthusiasm when she talks about her job at the Limerick nuclear plant near Pottstown.

Her blond hair swings, her blue eyes flash, and she launches into a riff: "Nuclear plants are so much bigger in every way. The pipes are bigger, the pumps are bigger. Everything is bigger and very cool," she said.

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."

Exelon Corp.: Has obtained or will seek license extensions for five reactors at Peach Bottom in York County, Three Mile Island in Dauphin County, and Limerick in Montgomery County; may seek to add reactors in Illinois and Texas.

PPL Corp.: Applied in 2006 for license extensions for two reactors at Susquehanna in Luzerne County and may seek to build a third.

PSEG Nuclear L.L.C.: Expected to seek license renewal in 2009 for three reactors in Salem County and may seek to add a fourth.

AmerGen/Exelon: Applied in 2005 for a license extension for Oyster Creek reactor in Ocean County.

FirstEnergy Corp. Pa. Power Co.: Applied in 2007 for license extensions for two reactors in Beaver County.

Source: Nuclear Energy Institute and companies

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