Aging Workforce Impacts U.S. Nuclear Industry
Magellan Professional Solutions, Inc. November 08, 2007

The aging workforce in the nuclear power industry will create universal attrition problems, particularly in maintenance and engineering. The maintenance and engineering areas of a nuclear plant require highly developed skills sets that require a combination of training and on the job experience. There is a likely shortfall of personnel in these two areas that will develop within the next five years, and beyond. Overcoming the potential lack of personnel will require a combination of actions, including:

• Identifying and planning for the potential personnel shortages
• Identifying opportunities for staffing reductions where possible through process changes
• Attracting, hiring, and retaining new personnel
• Training these personnel, both technically and experientially

Most nuclear power companies will need to conduct workforce planning analyses to identify and plan for their potential personnel shortages. Planning must include identifying opportunities to reduce physical work requirements through process improvements, technology applications, and the reduction of unnecessary work. A workforce planning model should be developed that applies the plants' expected attrition and overlays key elements such as historical attrition causes, future capital program needs, and potential outsourcing or alliance opportunities.

As was reported in the Wall Street Journal in August 2007:

The shrinking nuclear power workforce is "a big issue," that the industry would have to resolve even if new nuclear plants weren't on the drawing board, said Randy Hutchinson, senior vice president of nuclear business development for New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. "Building new plants, to some extent, compounds that problem," he said.

About 27% of the nation's nuclear power employees, about 15,600 workers, will be eligible to retire in the next five years, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's Washington lobbying group. Nearly half U.S. nuclear power employees are older than 47, and less than 8% are younger than 32, according to the NEI. Meanwhile, the number of university nuclear engineering programs has declined in the U.S. to about 29 from 65 in 1980, turning out fewer nuclear engineers.

Aging nuclear employees are reflective of the state of the utility workforce as a whole. The average age of utility workers is 50 years old, the highest average age for any industry, according to the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington lobbying group for investor-owned electric utilities.

Nuclear plant development in the U.S. became exponentially more difficult after the accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 raised fears about the safety of nuclear power. But rising power prices, concerns about carbon emissions and government incentives for the first six new plants to be built have boosted investment in new nuclear power.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans to hire 350 people by the end of the year to prepare for a rush of applications to build plants. Like private industry, it may find gathering the experience it needs tough. "Suddenly, the NRC will find they have all these applications coming in to build and that they don't have enough staff," said Dr. Debu Majumdar, a senior nuclear adviser at the Department of Energy.

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