OAK RIDGE LEADERS COME TOGETHER TO DISCUSS THE SECRET CITY’S FUTURE WORKFORCE
Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Energy Facilities Contractor Group (EFCOG) and Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) held another workforce roundtable, this time in Oak Ridge, TN, home to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the Y-12 National Security Complex. Oak Ridge is also a leading community for new nuclear missions including for companies such as Kairos, X-Energy and Orano. The Roundtable was organized with support from United Cleanup Oak Ridge LLC (UCOR), the lead cleanup contractor for DOE Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management.
Oak Ridge Mayor Warren Gooch opened the roundtable with excitement, drawing attention to the wide array of economic opportunities that Oak Ridge will host, including projects from X-Energy, Kairos Power, and Orano. The Mayor noted that Orano’s multi-billion-dollar uranium enrichment facility would be the largest economic project in the history of the state of Tennessee. To rise to the challenge of fully capitalizing on these opportunities, Mayor Gooch emphasized that Oak Ridge must continue its commitment to environmental stewardship and revitalization, build up the next generation of its workforce, and maintain the city’s strong public education programs. He drew on Oak Ridge’s historic mission to summarize its current duty succinctly; “When America calls on Oak Ridge, Oak Ridge steps up”.
EM Senior Advisor, Candice Robertson (EM-1), highlighted the importance of workforce training and recruitment and thanked EFCOG and ECA for working on these important meetings. She congratulated those in the room for coming together to address workforce needs in Oak Ridge and voiced her support for the programs undertaken by leaders in workforce and higher education to meet the demands of those needs. She also congratulated Oak Ridge on attracting private nuclear developments and emphasized that such achievements come down to effective cooperation among all parties. Robertson spoke to the strong value of partnerships to the EM cleanup program, highlighting partnerships with the sites and surrounding community institutions, such as agreements with academia and private businesses. These partnerships are part of EM’s larger initiative to drive economic development, generate technological innovations, and rejuvenate the EM workforce across the complex. The Senior Advisor encouraged and opened the door to continuing collaboration between the Oak Ridge community and DOE-EM.
Carrie Meyer, DOE-EM Director for the Office of Communications and Stakeholder Management, followed by candidly addressing the challenges faced by Oak Ridge and DOE-EM in recruiting and retaining a next generation workforce amid competition and attrition as the scope of DOE-EM’s mission expands. However, Meyer also emphasized the results that prior DOE-EM-EFCOG-ECA Workforce Roundtables have yielded, and she credited and thanked communities continued engagement for those successes.
Chuck Hope, Councilman for the City of Oak Ridge and ECA Secretary, reflected on the meetings the DOE-EM-EFCOG-ECA partnership has produced at the Hanford Site, the Savannah River Site, and Los Alamos. He acknowledged that opportunities offered by Kairos and Orano present huge demand for workforce replenishment and expansion. Confident in Oak Ridge’s ability to surmount these challenges, he stated: “Together, we can all work to meet our goals of attracting younger generations to work at the site, identify specific jobs and skills needed to support future cleanup efforts and advanced nuclear development, as well as improve hiring and retention rates and continue to build up our educators with the support and assistance they need.”
Employer Panel: Local Workforce Needs
Jay Mullis, Manager of DOE Oak Ridge Environmental Management (DOE-OREM), Charlie Malarkey, UCOR Administrative Services Manager, and Charlie Woody, President of Knoxville Building and Construction Trades Council (KBCTC), discussed future workforce needs and what programs have been successful in addressing those needs.
The panelists agreed that the largest challenges they are facing is attracting and retaining a highly educated workforce, especially when competing with other jobs that may offer more desirable compensation. This issue is compounded by the fact that Oak Ridge does not need just nuclear engineers to meet the demand of such ambitious projects, but will require lawyers, accountants, contractors, and specialties from the whole gamut of blue- and white-collar jobs to support these projects. Another issue brought up was bridging the knowledge gap and the generational gap that the 10–15-year lull in nuclear development has created. For example, 20% of UCOR’s workforce is preparing to retire within the next five (5) years.
For panelists, the solution to these hurdles lay in dialing up outreach initiatives. DOE-OREM, UCOR, and KBCTC have all worked to expand their recruiting programs via incorporating more apprenticeships, internships, and fellowships into their workforce. UCOR and KBCTC offer training classes and programs to students as well. They hope to retain apprentices, interns, and fellows, and provide these early career professionals with a clear career path. To surmount compensation gaps and the allure of remote work, the panelists have worked with DOE to provide a superior benefits structure to new employees. Through partnerships with DOE and by enmeshing themselves into regional partnerships, the panelists are finding success in building out a next generation workforce and providing workers with the career guidance and benefits to retain them.
Educator Panel: Preparing the Pipeline
To effectively rebuild Oak Ridge’s future nuclear workforce, higher education opportunities will need to be aligned with the specific needs of the community. Dr. Bruce Borchers, Superintendent of Oak Ridge Schools, Mike Magil, Workforce Development Director at Roane State Community College, Dr. Wes Hines former Nuclear Engineering Department Head at the University of Tennessee Knoxville and Dr. Kumar Yelamarthi, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Tennessee Tech University, joined the panel to discuss what actions they are taking to do just that, and the challenges they have faced in doing so.
Panelists were aligned in their goals to engage students in nuclear earlier and prepare them to be work-ready in the workforce earlier. Time and repeated engagement are necessary to generate interest in nuclear industry, meaning engagement starts in middle school classrooms and continues through high school and into higher education. For Roane State Community College, one of the largest challenges posed is reaching out to historically underserved and rural communities and setting up 1st generation students up for success. Outreach to communities and strengthening partnerships with community organizations was a priority professed by several of the panelists. To prepare students for the workforce more quickly, panelists have turned to double enrollment programs, and coordinating with each other to ensure credits are transferable across community colleges and universities. Ultimately, generating interest among students and early career seekers comes down to the narrative. As panelists noted, nuclear decommissioning offers unmatched career security and longevity; they stated: “Only three things are certain in life: taxes, death, and nuclear decommissioning”.
Randy Hemann, City Manager for Oak Ridge and ECA Board member, provided a summary of the City’s efforts to take an active role in workforce planning. He stated simply that the potential offered by Oak Ridge’s opportunities far outweighs the City’s challenges. Those challenges include a lack of housing, lack of transport infrastructure, and the compensation gaps between opportunities in Oak Ridge when compared to the competition. Oak Ridge must grapple with a larger service area than neighboring communities and fellow nuclear communities as it comes to terms with all of those challenges. But Oak Ridge is well prepared. It is in the process of developing a Comprehensive Land Use Plan and fostering effective partnerships with the surrounding counties, DOE, local contractors, unions and industry.
Community Panel: Providing the Community Perspective
Elaborating on Hemann’s presentation, Wade Creswell, Roane County Executive and ECA Board Member, Joe Heckman, Chair of the East Tennessee Economic Council (ETEC), Derrick Hammond, Council Member for the City of Oak Ridge, and Maria Catron, Executive Director of the Oak Ridge Housing Authority, discussed the community’s vital role in Oak Ridge’s workforce planning.
Panelists concurred that for most prospective candidates, there’s no job without childcare facilities, transportation access, healthcare facilities, and housing opportunities. Housing in particular is a notable challenge, as Oak Ridge can’t build houses fast enough, and will need to diversify its housing stock in order to accommodate a wide array of different people fulfilling different employment needs. As mentioned in the Workforce panel, Oak Ridge has workforce needs across the board, blue and white collar. To address these shortfalls, panelists intend to rely on expanding partnerships with DOE, and Roane and Anderson counties. Panelists acknowledge that they can’t homegrown all the talent they’ll need to fuel economic growth – but they do recognize what pathways are available to achieve that growth.
Across all three panels, panelists ascribed a certain strength and gravity to the story of the Oak Ridge. For the citizens of Oak Ridge, the city’s origins as a Manhattan Project site, and its continued service to the country through to the end of the Cold War, are a legacy to be proud of and a powerful vision to share with the world. County Executive Creswell even acknowledges that Oak Ridge won its selection to be Orano’s site through the power and energy of its community narrative. Through sharing this vision, and inviting others to take part, Oak Ridge hopes to build its community at the same time that it builds a revolutionary new workforce to tackle the nation’s most ambitious and vital nuclear projects.
Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Regulatory and Policy Affairs, Kristen Ellis (EM-4), brought the discussion to a close. In her role as EM-4, Ellis has worked to organize and attend important workforce discussions across the country. She reiterated DOE’s commitment to facilitate workforce discussions and to find novel ways to partner with the city, higher education, and workforce in Oak Ridge to ensure the Secret City is well-equipped to step up to the next generation of nuclear development.
ECA looks forward to providing future updates on the DOE-EM-EFCOG-ECA Workforce initiative. ECA is excited to host the next Workforce Roundtable in Idaho Falls in April 2025, just before the 2025 ECA New Nuclear Forum, April 22 – 24.
The ECA Forum is the only meeting designed to bring together DOE, federal, state, local and tribal governments and policymakers with developers, utilities, regulators, industry, and academia to identify opportunities, challenges and to build the partnerships necessary to support nuclear development. To learn more about the ECA Forum, visit our website.
For more on the DOE-EM-EFCOG-ECA workforce partnership, visit our website.