A nuclear brain drain

A wave of retirements will leave nuclear plants scrambling

A casual observer at a nuclear power plant these days might notice a peculiar phenomenon: lots of receding hairlines and graying temples at the controls. Within the next decade, most of the nation's highly skilled nuclear specialists -- engineers, plant operators, maintenance technicians, radiation chemists and fuel assembly designers -- will become pensioners.

The retirement wave comes at a crucial time, just as the nation's utilities are preparing to build the first new nuclear plants in several decades.

The nuclear industry is scrambling to replace its aging work force, much as it refits old power plants with new valves and pumps. Job opportunities suddenly abound at companies that design the plants, at the regulatory agency that licenses and inspects reactors, at the consulting firms brought in to navigate the complex licensing process and at contractor shops used for maintenance and construction.

In North Carolina alone, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy in Wilmington has hired 500 workers in the past three years and could add up to 900 more within five years. Duke Energy in Charlotte is hiring 200 a year. Progress Energy in Raleigh hired 140 last year and plans to add as many this year.

The exodus of a generation of highly skilled senior workers is creating a wide open job market in an industry presumed moribund only a few years ago. To keep up with job demand, university nuclear engineering departments have quadrupled enrollment in the past decade to about 2,000 students today.

N.C. State University's nuclear engineering department stuck it out through shrinking enrollments during the lean years and managed to avoid the fate of more than two dozen college nuclear departments that no longer exist.

The university's nuclear engineering department is experiencing record enrollment: 196 students in pursuit of lifetime job security, high pay and professional advancement.

Despite the lingering stigma of nuclear power, advocates feel vindicated by this reversal of fortune.

"These are the best of times," said Mohamed Bourham, the interim department head of nuclear engineering at N.C. State. "And we hope that this trend continues for the sake of humanity."

Optimism is high at N.C. State, where nuclear engineering students hone their skills on a small nuclear reactor on campus and gain experience during paid summer internships at Progress Energy and Duke Energy nuclear plants. By the time they graduate, the students select from an average of 3.5 job offers in a field with median salaries that can reach $92,000 a year.

N.C. State senior Mike Hershkowitz is a practical 22-year-old from Hagerstown, Md., who is set to graduate in December. Job security and high pay figure prominently in his choice of career, so much so that his parents refused to pay for Hershkowitz's first choice of study, international business, because he didn't speak a foreign language.

"There's going to be a mass retirement that's going to send salaries through the roof," said Hershkowitz, assessing his prospects in nuclear engineering.

Industry rebounds

All industries have ups and downs, but the prognosis for the country's nuclear industry had been especially bleak. Double-digit interest rates in the 1970s sent construction costs soaring during a period of ambitious expansion.

The 1979 meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania sealed the industry's fate, killing plans for about 60 nuclear reactors in various stages of planning and construction.

Hiring came to a standstill and a generation of nuclear workers sought their fortunes in more promising fields.