ARLINGTON, VA – For sites in the Department of Energy’s nuclear complex recruiting electricians and skilled craftspeople is a big task – and keeping them can be another.
This was a key theme to emerge during a Tuesday Jan. 27 panel discussion here at Exchange Monitor’s annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit.
Senior managers from National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites such as Pantex in Texas; Kansas City National Security Campus; the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge in Tennessee and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina spoke about labor market concerns.
“We are dealing with data centers,” competing with SRS for staff, said Lee Schifer, a senior vice president for Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS). “We have a big data center.. being built 15 miles”away.
These data centers can lure away not only electricians but “a little bit of everybody,” Schifer said.
“We have one in our backyard, a stone’s throw away – literally a stone’s throw away,” said Scott Kennedy, infrastructure and modernization division director at PanTeXas Deterrence. Another such data center is being built in Armstrong County, Texas, 40 miles away, he said.
Roughly 60 people left Pantex a few weeks ago for other jobs, Kennedy said.
It is not just competition from data centers, and nuclear energy facilities in the case of Y-12 in Tennessee, but other factors can hurt DOE nuclear weapons complex retention.
Last fall when the 43-day government shutdown was occurring , SRS lost 10 electricians “in one day!” said Savannah River Nuclear Solutions CEO Jeff Griffin. Griffin moderated the panel.
The senior managers have various coping strategies for retaining good employees. Most stressed pay, benefits, But Gene Sievers, vice president of Consolidated Nuclear Security at Y-12, offered one novel solution “Hire good janitors.” Over time they learn much about the site and its operations, and often can move up in rank to better jobs, he said.