The management and operations contractor for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina has hired 900 employees to date in fiscal 2019, part of its efforts to offset workforce attrition and to ramp up current and upcoming missions.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) plans to hire up to 300 more workers before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, and roughly 750 employees in each of the next two years.
“We have enduring missions to perform involving nuclear materials management, environmental stewardship and the Savannah River National Laboratory, as examples,” SRNS President and CEO Stuart MacVean said in a recent press release. “Performing these missions safely, securely and efficiently requires we maintain certain levels of staffing throughout our organization.”
An SRNS spokesperson said Tuesday that the large influx of new employees will serve in various jobs at the Department of Energy facility, including mechanical and electric engineering, facility operations, radiation control, site maintenance, and administration.
Binge hiring has been part of SRNS’ years-long approach to offset workforce attrition, as the contractor loses an increasing number of employees to retirement. Though many new jobs are meant to replace those who have retired, the workforce has grown to more than 6,100 – an uptick from the contractor’s 5,438 employees as of September 2018.
The average age of employees in the current workforce is 47. That’s a good sign for SRNS, which reported in 2016 that its average employee age was 54.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions is also ramping up hiring to take on growing missions and upcoming ventures. Expanding missions include tritium production for the U.S. Department of Defense. The amount of tritium produced at SRS is not made public for security reasons, since the gas is used to trigger a chain reaction in nuclear weapons. But the M&O prime did report in November that it was hiring about 100 more workers this fiscal year to increase tritium production.
