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Nuclear industry pays well — and it’s growing

Americans are becoming more accepting of nuclear energy, and as the industry grows, it’s expected to create more high-paying jobs that help reduce global warming.

The energy industry and the federal government are working to increase the pool of qualified white- and blue-collar workers ready for jobs in nuclear plants as 35 percent of the existing work force approaches retirement age.

The industry is finding it easier to recruit workers because of the growing acceptance of atomic energy after Americans shunned it for 30 years.

“It is a pretty darn exciting time to be in the business,” said Bill Levis, president of PSEG Power, an arm of a New Jersey utility called Public Service Enterprise Group. “There were many people who were talking about our demise a decade ago.”

The industry is offering high salaries — between $60,000 and $70,000 a year for white- and blue-collar entry-level positions — which has helped attract students, especially as unemployment is going up and the economy is slowing down. The median household income is about $50,000 nationwide, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Students are getting the message that they can make money while helping the environment, said Bill Miller, a nuclear engineering faculty member at the University of Missouri at Columbia. His department enrolls about 65 graduate students, Miller said, about double the number in 2000.

“There are jobs and fat salaries to be had, and students figure that out real quickly,” Miller said.

There are 104 nuclear plants around the country. The industry has submitted applications to build 21 new ones. Eighteen existing plants have applied to renew their licenses, according to Bill McIntyre, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Nuclear power became stigmatized as dangerously unsafe after the 1979 nuclear accident in Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island and the fatal 1986 accident at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union.

The U.S. industry maintains it has had a solid safety record since 1979 and needs workers as it grows.

Carol Berrigan of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group in Washington, D.C., said each plant employs 400 to 700 people. That means up to 14,700 jobs could be generated if all 21 plants are built.

Not everyone is happy about the renewed interest in nuclear energy.

Critics such as Jim Riccio of Greenpeace say nuclear plants are costly to build, take years to be completed and generate harmful radioactive waste whose safe disposal is a huge scientific and political problem.

Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, deserve a closer look because they pose none of the risks of nuclear power, he said.

“We think there are better jobs to be had in renewable alternatives than pounding more money into the nuclear rat hole.”