Today's Wall Street Journal describes what it calls the revival of the nuclear energy industry, which comes, they say, with new job opportunities and renewed academic interest.
In 1979, a partial meltdown at the Three-Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania soured the U.S. on nuclear power, raising questions about its safety, as well as related questions about what to do with of spent nuclear fuel--the term the industry favors over the broader and more loaded "nuclear waste".
The Journal says the comeback is driven by issues related to the economy, foreign-policy, and climate-change. Right now, the journal says, nuclear fission generates some 20% of the electricity used in the United States, but utilities have applied to build 26 new nuclear plants. Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse (now part of Japan's Toshiba Corporation), which plans to build 6 of those plants, added 1,400 workers last year. The company expects to add another 650 jobs each year for the next 5 years.
The uptick in job opportunities has sparked more interest on nearby campuses. A new undergraduate class in nuclear engineering at the University of Pittsburgh was expected to enroll 25 students; instead, 75 students signed up. 104 students are pre-enrolled for next year. We reported explosive growth in nuclear engineering programs--and multiple job-offers for graduates--back in 2002.
At nearby Carnegie Mellon University, engineers at the Field Robotics Center have built robots to clean up the sites of nuclear accidents, and are researching others with potential uses in that industry.
There are still concerns about what to do with the spent nuclear fuel. Plans to reprocess fuel into plutonium raise serious security concerns, since plutonium is used to make nuclear weapons. And plans to store spent fuel at a new facility in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, have been put on hold by the Obama Administration.
The National Spent Nuclear Fuel Program at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls is conducting research on what to do with spent nuclear fuel. That lab has current career opportunities if you're interested in helping find a solution.
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