Download our Industry & Jobs Fact Sheet
COMING SOON
COMING SOON
Nuclear plants are job magnets. Whether in construction, temporary roles for planned outages or ongoing operational positions, there are many opportunities available for workers. For instance, a minimum of 2000 workers are required to build a typical 1GWe reactor. During the construction of Vogtle 3 & 4 (the most recent reactors in the US) more than 9000 construction workers were on site at peak.
Moreover, there are more than 5x more permanent on site jobs in nuclear compared to solar or wind.
Jobs in nuclear traditionally are higher paying than jobs in other energy industries. In fact in the United States workers in nuclear receive on average a 50% higher salary than workers in other power source jobs.
In addition to these benefits, the nuclear industry is one of the safest industries to work in, offers extensive benefits and is highly unionised.
You don't have to be a nuclear physicist to work at a nuclear plant. In fact most jobs aren't even directly related to nuclear.
For instance, around 77% of coal jobs are directly transferrable to nuclear plants. Nuclear plants can be thought of as a coal plant with a reactor producing heat instead of a furnace without any emissions. A civil nuclear power capacity could also create future job opportunities for workers in the AUKUS submarine program.
Nuclear is approximately 3x more reliable than solar & wind and 2x more reliable than fossil fuels. Unlike other energy sources, nuclear power plants aren't impacted by the weather such as sunlight and wind.
Nuclear can work together with solar and wind to secure the grid with the potential to provide caseload power or adapt to provide flexible power based on the grid's needs.
Nuclear power plants can produce much more than electricity for the grid. Nuclear can help support industries through powering clean desalination, producing clean hydrogen, powering data centres and providing process heat for heavy industry.
Microreactors are also being developed to provide off the grid power to industry. There are multiple in development including from Westinghouse with some expected to be deployed in the next few years.