Palisades, originally shut down in 2022, is slated to reopen this year. Three Mile Island Unit 1, now Crane Clean Energy Center, is targeting a 2027 restart. Google and Kairos Power will be building up to seven SMRs, targeting 2030 for the first unit. Executive orders seek 400 Gigawatts of new U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050. The future is nuclear, but the silent undertone beneath each of these announcements is a workforce assumption that is getting more challenging to meet. The Department of Energy projects that the domestic nuclear energy workforce must roughly triple, growing to nearly 375,000 workers by 2050 to meet the demand of these projects. But there’s one glaring problem: the people aren’t there.
Where the math breaks down
Tripling the workforce in 25 years means roughly 12,000 nuclear workers need to be hired per year, every year, in an industry that has seen essentially 0% growth in recent years.
And the math gets harder. The current nuclear workforce is aging out. Nearly 40% of nuclear workers are eligible for retirement within the next decade, and it’s not currently positioned to adequately replace itself. This issue is not isolated to a specific geography. It’s a global problem.
And while the need is being identified now, the ramp up time to get a fresh workforce trained and experience for this type of work doesn't happen quickly. A reactor operator candidate must have at least three years of power plant experience. SRO applicants need 18 months as a qualified non-licensed operator or in a plant staff role before they can enter SRO training. Site-based training programs typically run 18 to 24 months. And on top of that, licenses are plant-specific, so moving operators means re-training and re-licensing.
While needs are accelerating based on the projects listed and slated, the workforce isn’t currently there and it’s taking too long to bring a fresh workforce in place.
The current industry response won’t fill the gap
The workforce shortage isn’t a secret, and companies and government entities alike are taking action to cover the need. However, many of the efforts either solve a very short-term need or are positioned to cover a future state.
1. Trading experienced engineers within the current pool. Finding a great candidate and pulling them from a different organization is a win for a real-time project, but it doesn’t expand the talent pool or help the shortage across the broader nuclear landscape.
2. Pulling retired workers back in. Many organizations, in a timeline bind, will look to their retired workforce for short-term contract work. While that can be a patch for an immediate need, it isn’t a longer-term strategy. Companies also often leverage retirees with informal agreements, which can put the organization at risk if something goes wrong.
3. Waiting for today’s students to turn into tomorrow’s workforce. The DOE just funded $49.7M across 10 leading universities through the Nuclear Reactor Safety Training and Workforce Development Program in an effort to close the nuclear workforce gap. This will help fuel the work happening in the 2030s, but it doesn't address the critical needs of today.
Three shifts to help meet the need
While the groundwork is being laid for the work needed in the more-distant future, there are some strategies companies can employ today to close the current nuclear talent gap.
1. Grow the pool by leveraging adjacent experience where possible. While many key roles, like reactor operators, engineers, and licensing, require that someone comes from a nuclear background, there are roles, like project controls, schedulers, and QA, where adjacent industry experience can translate very well. Identify which of your roles can be filled by oil & gas, defense, aerospace, and utility veterans with structured on ramps. This is the fastest way to expand the current pool at scale.
2. Make sure knowledge doesn’t walk out the door with your retirees. There are steps to be taken today to ensure the knowledge gap doesn’t widen because of poor planning. Pair your experts with their successors to document not only procedures but to understand the rationale behind those procedures. Effective knowledge transfer can help lessen the knowledge gap left behind.
3. Structure a blended workforce that accounts for the hiring realities. Supplement your core, nuclear-experienced FTEs with a blend of adjacent industry transfers, retiree advisors, and other project specialists. This mix gives you continuity, scale, experience, and depth.
Conclusion
The nuclear workforce shortage is not an isolated HR issue: it’s an organizational and industry imperative that needs to be addressed to keep the necessary momentum. Every restart and SMR commitment made today depends on a workforce that doesn’t exist yet. This need cannot be assumed passively. It requires proactive and deliberate movement to staff the future.
This piece was originally published on aeg-inc.com/engineering-staffing.