News & Events

Good morning. Thank you, Art, and congratulations to the organizers of this Conference on Nuclear Training and Education (CONTE). I also want to take a moment to recognize Gil Brown and Andy Klein, who will receive the Training Excellence award tomorrow for the many contributions they have made to this industry.

There has never been a more exciting time for the nuclear energy industry than today. And I must say that there has never been a more personally gratifying time for me as well.

I was involved in the building of a number of first generation commercial nuclear power plants. To be sure, that was a special time. We spoke then of how economical it is to generate electricity using nuclear energy. We spoke of the environmental benefits of an energy source that produces no air emissions. And we spoke of energy diversity as we shifted from oil to nuclear for power generation.

But today’s world provides a context more urgent, and a scope more profound. Petroleum is no longer simply an import—it is a political ransom. Natural gas—once used only for peaking power and home heating—now often is deployed for baseload generation. Due to unsustainable demand pressure, it is no longer cheap, and it has punishing price volatility. The evidence for climate change grows more alarming—and countries and utilities around the world are turning to new nuclear plants as part of the solution.

The role that energy security plays in national security has never been more evident. And nuclear energy’s role as one of the primary energy sources for our nation has never been more essential. In fact, it is a national imperative.

Today there is a strong bipartisan majority in the public and in the Congress who support nuclear energy and agree that new plants should be added to the generation mix.

This conference and its predecessors—the Gatlinburg workshops—were held to address the challenges of educating and training the men and women—the nuclear professionals—who make up the nuclear energy industry today. It is this workforce that has brought the industry to world class performance.

Now the challenge is twofold—how do we bring in the talent to continue operating the existing fleet of plants through a 60 year period of service? Second, how do we prepare to expand that workforce to meet the needs of a new generation of nuclear units in the US and worldwide?

What I would like to share with you today are my thoughts on three topics. First, the status of nuclear workforce issues—on each one, there is bad news, and there is good news. Second, a methodology for creating a strong nuclear workforce for the future. Last, a bit on excellence in human performance.

Issues—Bad News and Good News
First, the bad news and the good news.

Number One—Dwindling and Aging Workforce.

Yes, we do have a looming workforce crisis. The average age of employees in the industry is 48 years—one of the oldest of any major industries in the country. Retirement and attrition will create the need to essentially re-staff the existing fleet over the next 10 years. We need to get the younger generation into the industry.

But the industry is hiring, and we have employment opportunities that are attractive to talented young people, both in the craft and in the professional engineering and management fields.

Research among college engineering students has shown that the prospect of building new plants is the single most important factor in attracting new talent to the nuclear energy industry. Social responsibility, creativity, learning opportunities, compensation—these are the other priorities when young people look for in a career today.

The nuclear energy industry offers these things, and more. Our jobs pay well, and provide job stability. They are local—which is important to craft labor. They cannot be off-shored—which is important to all workers. And they are environmentally responsible, and support sustainable development.

And membership in North America Young Generation Nuclear today is over 2,600, up from just 1050 in 2005, an increase of 148 percent in just two years’ time, both from young people coming into the industry and from the success of NA-YGN to provide a professional and social fabric for new nuclear professionals.

Number Two—Recruiting from the Nuclear Navy.

Yes, traditionally, the industry recruited heavily from the Nuclear Navy, but today the Navy has significantly downsized and the number of nuclear trained personnel available is much less since the last time the industry had high recruiting demands.

But, the number of community college programs to develop new workers is increasing, and federal funding is being made available for new programs. Let me give you some recent examples.

• Linn State Technical College—$2.4 million for radiation protection technicians.
• Central Virginia Community College—$1.2 million for radiation protection and non-destructive examination technicians.
• Idaho State University—nearly $2 million for electrical, mechanical, and information and control technicians.
• Lakeland Community College—$225,000 for nuclear engineering technology dual-enrollment.

Our labor unions have also contributed to the development of new workers. There is renewed support for, and interest in, apprenticeship programs.

We have to recognize that the new workforce will come to us from differing communities and backgrounds, and it only makes sense that industry and communities join together to have a more skilled entry level employee to train.

Number Three—University Nuclear Engineering Programs.

Yes, since 1980, the number of university nuclear engineering programs has fallen by 36. Only 29 are active today.

But, the those 29 are seeing tremendous growth in enrollment, and the number of nuclear engineering graduates at the Bachelor of Science level has jumped from 625 in the year 2000 to over 1700 in 2006, an increase of 172 percent.

And, finally, Number Four—New Plant Pressures on Current Workforce.

Yes, new plant activities are putting additional pressure on scarce utility human resources in areas like operations training, licensing and engineering, not to mention the project management and construction skills that will be needed.

But, utility announcements of plans to build new plants and the resulting media coverage are raising the interest level of young people in careers in our industry. This new plant activity has also resulted in new job creation at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And vendors are aggressively hiring in nuclear-related disciplines.

What young people are hearing is that, right now, 14 companies or consortia have publicly announced plans to apply for licenses for up to 33 new nuclear reactors. The first applications for a license to construct and operate a new nuclear plant will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission later this year.

Among the reactor designs being considered for construction, two have been granted design certification by the NRC and two are under review, with certification expected in 2007 and 2009. And the specific engineering to complete the full plant design is being completed and jointly funded through the Nuclear Power 2010 program.

Methodology for the Future
Now I would like to turn to a methodology for solving workforce issues that I believe will give us the success that we all want. It is a methodology that must fast-track training and qualification because, this time around, nuclear plants will be built much more quickly and efficiently than before.

Just as CONTE has brought together educators, industry trainers and human resource experts, I would like to challenge you to stay connected as you return home. As those of you in workforce development team with your human resource people to recruit and hire, involve the training departments from the start. The trainers need to tell HR what skills they need to see in new hires in order to be able to train them effectively. And the trainers need to be working with the workforce development people and the education resources in the community to establish the best skilled entry level worker they can.

We must collaborate on programs that will help this talent advance and remain in the industry.

Like it or not, the new workers are different and their experiences and aptitudes are different as well. From a technician level, we have a new generation of young people who have not grown up fixing things. Cars, appliances, even lawnmowers are too complicated to tinker with. A young worker today may think an Allen wrench is something that belongs to a guy named Allen, but that same young person can instinctively program a computer or create new internet databases. Their motor skills come from computer gaming.

So we are going to have to do things differently—we will need to train smarter and quicker; we will have to understand new ways of learning and apply new methods within our companies; mentoring programs will take on even greater importance to help new employees adjust as well as learn the “tribal knowledge” that is so often talked about. And we will have to train the mentors on their role as well.

Let’s listen to what the members of NA-YGN tell us. The group recently completed a focus group in which they asked a number of questions about how the young generation views success. In response to the question, “what actions would you recommend to your employer to increase your job satisfaction,” the most frequently identified action was clearly defined career development paths and development opportunities. The second action was to provide assignments that are aligned with the organization’s business strategy, with defined goals and roles; and the third was to provide management training to managers and for the managers to have more interaction with their employees. This says to me that the young people in our organizations are dedicated to the organization’s success and that they clearly want to be engaged and involved in helping the organization meet its goals.

The electric and gas utility industry has recently joined forces to create the Center for Energy Workforce Development. The Center’s objectives are, first, to decrease the amount of time it takes to create educational programs and improve the skill levels of graduates, and, second, to increase the number of diverse, qualified applicants who want to work for utilities.

The Center’s partners are utilities and their associations—EEI, AGA, and NEI—who team with educational institutions, the workforce system, and labor unions to create workable solutions that can be implemented regionally. The Department of Labor also is supporting the Center’s activities.

The Center currently has three key projects underway.

First, an energy Career Awareness campaign targeting students, parents, teachers and school counselors. The campaign includes a Web site, a national advertising campaign, and communications resources.

Second, a Model Workforce Development program. This program identifies, documents and distributes best practice models in workforce planning, career planning, training, certification and job placement.

Third, the Industry Curriculum program. This program identifies, documents, and communicates the skills and competencies needed for critical jobs and the training available to deliver the skills.

I hope that you will get involved in the work of the Center for Energy Workforce Development as we move ever closer to building the next generation of new nuclear plants.

All of us— industry workforce development, human resource and training departments; universities and four-year colleges, community colleges, and high schools; the Department of Labor—must coordinate in a seamless fashion to create a channel of talent flowing into and then staying in the industry.

Excellence in Human Performance
The title of this session is “Achieving Excellence in Human Performance.”

As an industry, we seek a high level of human performance for the sake of plant safety as well as reliable plant operations. We work to achieve this level of excellence, first, through the kind of people we hire, and, second, through the plant culture we establish to develop the professionalism that will give us the performance to which the entire industry aspires.

That’s the bottom line and what this conference is all about.

We must continue, I believe, to set as our ultimate goal professionalism and a culture of safety as we move forward to expand our workforce. We must continue to inculcate a respect and understanding of the technology and a respect for the human being. In short, the attitude to do the right thing. I strongly believe that this is why we have achieved the results across the industry that we are so proud of today.

Conclusion
I would like to conclude by saying that it is my sincere belief that this conference has played an important role over the years in bringing all of us together to consider the state of nuclear training and education and share our best thinking on how we can continue to improve.

I am honored to have been a part of this community all of these years, and I thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts on what all of us have dedicated our best efforts toward accomplishing—excellence in nuclear training and education—in human performance and safety of our nation’s nuclear industry.