July 2008

Critical State

The number of nuclear engineering graduates is on the rise. Will it be enough to meet the industry's workforce needs?

By Danielle Boykin

Incidents at the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear power plants in the '70s and '80s turned the U.S. public off from this energy source, and the industry has experienced the pain of that distrust. In light of rising energy costs and mounting concerns about the environment, public opinion has shifted in favor of a revival of nuclear power. The Department of Energy projects that the U.S. will need 25% more electricity by 2030, but that will require greater output by the nation's 104 nuclear power plants and new reactor construction.

With a high demand for a strong engineering workforce in the nuclear power industry and 23 applications for new plants awaiting review and approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the trend of increasing nuclear engineering program enrollments and graduates couldn't come at a better time, according to educators and industry professionals. But will it be enough?

Raymond Juzaitis leads Texas A&M University's Nuclear Engineering Department, which is one of the top producers of nuclear engineering graduates in the nation. He has witnessed the nuclear industry downturn during the previous two decades, and that has produced dire consequences for nuclear engineering education. "As that happened, a lot of universities closed the doors of their nuclear departments or either absorbed them into other engineering departments," says Juzaitis, who has nearly 30 years of experience with national security R&D programs at Department of Energy laboratories. "Not only did the number of students graduating dry up, but the faculty to teach them dried up. The whole system was left without a strong infrastructure."

The Energy Department's Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education has documented a significant continuing rise in nuclear engineering degree enrollments and degrees awarded during the past four years. The 2007 survey found the following trends:

• Enrollment of undergraduate students in 2006 increased over 2005 and was more than twice the enrollments reported in 1999 and 2000. 
• From 2005 to 2006, enrollment in graduate programs increased by 5% to 1,050. This was an increase of more than 40% from 2000 and 2001.
• From 2005 to 2006, the number of bachelor's degrees awarded increased by nearly 30% to 346, the highest number in the last 10 years.
• The number of master's degrees awarded in 2006 increased to 214. This was a 25% increase over 2005 and was the highest number awarded since 1996.

According to the American Society for Engineering Education, full-time undergraduate enrollments in nuclear engineering went from 709 students in 2000 to 1,771 students in 2007.

A significant movement for a nuclear power revival in the U.S has been brewing for a little more than five years. "The forces behind the renaissance are sufficiently diverse and the argument for nuclear is becoming stronger by the day," says Yousry Azmy, head of the North Carolina State University College of Engineering's Nuclear Engineering Department in Raleigh. Azmy points out that people have growing concerns about global warming and the environmental effect of greenhouse gases and burning coal in addition to concerns about the economic security of the global energy market. "We have seen gas prices climb to historic highs and this cannot sustain the economic growth desired," he says. "I think everyone agrees that we need to have a diverse portfolio of sources of energy."

Azmy constantly hears major concerns about retirements of well-trained industry professionals who have a long and well-established experience. "All of these people will walk out of the door with literally centuries of knowledge, and the histories of their organizations are going to walk out the door with them," he says. "The industry is rightfully very concerned about this."

Survival of the Fittest
How did some of these engineering programs survive during the downturn? At Texas A&M, the department diversified its program to target areas outside of the nuclear energy industry, such as the medical field and nuclear security. "A combination of a supportive university administration and visionary departmental leadership looked more broadly at educating professionals, and we were able to stay alive and grow," says Juzaitis. Enrollment has surged from 50 undergraduates in the 1998–99 school year to 236 undergraduates and 103 graduates in the 2007–08 school year.

Juzaitis also credits a statewide effort to revive the nuclear energy industry workforce. Texas is set to be home to several new plants if they are approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Texas A&M is also the only university in the U.S. with two nuclear research and teaching reactors.

When the enrollment numbers at North Carolina State University hit a record enrollment low of 41 undergraduates during the 1997–98 school year, the department focused on survival strategies. The school implemented an aggressive recruitment strategy, which involved massive outreach to schools across the state. "At that time we started employing our students to be the ambassadors of our program, and we sent them to [secondary] schools," says Mohamed Bourham, a nuclear engineering professor. The department eventually hired an outreach director to run a formal recruitment program. It also developed a teacher's workshop to use for education in the classroom and strengthened summer workshops for high school students. Enrollment for the 2007–08 school year was 156 for undergraduates and 57 for graduates.

Tim Wei, head of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering Department in Troy, New York, regularly hears from industry professionals, and he says the career opportunities are incredible for his graduates. "It's a very heavily graying workforce, and they are talking about needing thousands of engineers," says Wei. "No one program is going to come even close to filling that need." The department has grown from 44 nuclear engineering students in the fall of 2000 to 127 in the fall of 2007.

Wei attributes the program's survival during the "dark years" to the strength of a Navy nuclear program aimed at working professionals. The program has also received significant support from RPI President Shirley Ann Jackson, a former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The school remains one of the few in the nation that still operates a nuclear reactor, which provides students with a unique learning opportunity. Wei attributes the enrollment jump to a change of U.S. societal views about nuclear energy.

Marie Dieffenbach, senior student services administrator at RPI, believes that word is getting out that the job market is strong. "The prospective students and their families who are coming in are reading about the industry and reading about how good their job prospects are and that has been driving enrollments over the last five years," she says. Students are also enticed by high starting salaries for young professionals.

Nuclear engineering graduates are not struggling to find job opportunities. Many who are interested in going directly into the job market can easily secure several employment offers before graduating. "The vast majority of students that graduated in May were already spoken for with companies by the start of the second semester in January," says Dieffenbach. "Even after graduation, I have been contacted by companies that are desperate for nuclear engineers."

Some of the companies will settle for undergraduate interns to help them temporarily fill the gap. "The demand for engineers is so high that a lot of these companies don't want to wait for students to come out with advanced degrees," adds Wei.

Not a Pretty Picture
American Electric Power, which provides electricity to customers in 11 states, was so concerned about its workforce levels that the company created a new position to handle this issue. "Many of us got into this business in the '70s and early '80s before the Three Mile Island incident," says Kirk Newall, who serves as the workforce planning manager at the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant in Michigan. "Afterward, the industry started to shrink, so hiring backed off because it wasn't looked at as a vital industry. And at the same time, many of the nuclear engineering programs had shut down."

When the Nuclear Energy Institute developed a workforce issues taskforce in 2001, AEP became a charter member. "We got together and discussed the future of our workforce, and what we found didn't paint a pretty picture," says Newall. Today, about 30%–40% of the plant workforce of 1,100 is eligible to retire.

However, AEP is evaluating opportunities for growth in nuclear power as demand increases. "Now that more people are coming around to the idea of nuclear power, we are little more interested in it," says Newall. Currently, 6% of AEP's electricity generation comes from nuclear plants (more than 70% comes from coal-fired plants).

To meet the power plant's needs and attract new talent, Newall makes offers to students starting in the fall, and interns are tapped for potential job offers. AEP has established a new program to train and retain entry-level engineers through a year-long rotational engineering program. "The purpose is to meet and get to know the people at the site and the processes so when they get to their final position, they'll have a very solid network and will be able to hit the ground running," says Newall, who will have 22 new hires in a class beginning in August. "We have found that they have better networks and contacts than some of our veteran engineers."

Opportunities are not only abundant for new graduates, but also for experienced engineers who want to consider a career change. "We are about to get into activities for construction and new engineering that this industry hasn't seen since the 1970s, and with the amount of engineering that will be required going forward, it's going to be interesting for engineers to get into the industry," says Newall, who has a naval engineering background.

AREVA Inc., a nuclear energy products and services vendor headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, is going through the licensing process for four new reactors in Maryland, Missouri, New York, and Pennsylvania. Firm leaders are eager to start construction in 2010, but like most nuclear energy vendors and utilities, there are concerns about whether there will be enough engineers to support these projects.

Bernie Copsey, a hiring manager in AREVA's New Plants Engineering Division, says that competition to attract new talent is stiff, but the firm has been successful in branding itself to students. Copsey's group concentrates on determining staffing needs and recruitment strategies. More than 350 engineers are working on the new plants, but the company will need at least 100 more engineers within the next 18 months. Twenty-five percent of the division's staff members are currently eligible for retirement. "The good news is that universities are growing nuclear programs, but getting the new hires is just the first phase of a multiphase process," he says. "You have to get them trained and mentored."

In search of new talent, Copsey attends college job fairs and makes connections with groups such as the North American Young Generation in Nuclear. Copsey's division has a 90% acceptance rate of job offers. Internships are also one of the best ways to lure talent year after year. "The interns are the number one communication tool at the universities," says Copsey. "We make sure that our interns do real, good, honest work. So they go back and say, 'Wow, this was fun.'"

Many companies have formed partnerships with engineering schools and often serve on industry advisory boards in order to influence what students learn. "We're working closely with some of the universities on these senior projects so that it just isn't an exercise, but what they are learning is applicable to what they would be doing as an employee," says Copsey.

Importance of Research
Nuclear engineering departments are playing a critical role in the nuclear power industry's comeback, but the industry wants to ensure that research doesn't dwindle. In a 2007 report, a special committee of the American Nuclear Society expressed disapproval for a proposal to terminate a DOE program that supported university research. The report stated that nuclear technology is critical to U.S. policies on national security, foreign relations, energy, and the environment. The report added that meeting these challenges will greatly depend on the ability of the nation to educate and train a new generation of nuclear scientists and engineers.

Azmy believes it's important that university researchers, many of whom have international reputations in the field, are provided financial resources. "These are the people who will support, educate, and train the students who will [fuel] the expansion in nuclear power over the next half a century," he says. "These are young people who probably have a good 40 to 50 years in their careers."

North Carolina State University has a good base of financial support for its research, but there is always room for more. "We could use more because what is expected of us is a lot, and we do recognize that there is a premium across the nation on determining what role nuclear engineering will play in protecting both the economic and security interests of the United States," says Azmy. "As we proceed into the future, we do expect expansion in enrollment and expansion in research. It will delivered growth that will not be blind, but will work in conjunction with expectations of the market."

Federal government and industry support of university research will help keep the engine running, says Juzaitis. However, the greatest question about federal support will soon be up in the air after the Bush administration leaves the White House. "This has department heads across the country really worried about our university programs not having a clear home in a fast political environment," he says. "Next year there will be a new administration, and [we wonder] how are they going to look at nuclear engineering education and whose budget is it going to be in."

Wei believes that nuclear engineering departments have an opportunity to take a strong lead with advanced research in areas such as reactor safety and to revive the industry. "I think there is a tremendous opportunity," he says. "The future is incredibly bright."