Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe thinks so. Mr Bender says,”The United States is facing a critical shortage of nuclear scientists and engineers, as the demand grows for their expertise.” The areas discussed in Mr. Bender’s article are the United States aging complex of nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.
The National Nuclear Security Administration average age of its employees is 47 and it seems we don’t have young people getting into the nuclear field to replace them. The National Energy Institute estimates one-third of the workforce in the United States workforce at nuclear power plants will retire by 2012. The nation is not turning out enough college educated nuclear experts to cover existing nuclear plants,without building new plants.
President Obama recently announced plans for two new nuclear reactors and also announced an increase of spending in federal funds, to get a series of programs started to lure new students to earn degrees in various nuclear programs. Some of the problems of getting the young in this field is to convince them we are not going to build weapons of mass destruction, and what to do with nuclear waste. The nuclear waste problem is one that I have not seen or heard of any solutions ,that would make anyone want more nuclear reactors.
Another alarming fact about the shortage of nuclear experts in the future is that the United States will not be able to track what the rest of the world is doing regarding nuclear power. I find this most disturbing, considering all the coverage recently involving Iran and North Korea. If we have few experts how can we know if these countries are doing what they should be according to arms control agreements? What about the safety of our own nuclear arms and plants?
The Nuclear Power Industry has a lot of complex issues and needs to resolve them before I can support it’s resolve to replace fossil fuels as a source of clean safe energy
Some of the information from this post came from Mr. Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe.
This is another serious problem the world faces in the near future. First, many of the nuclear plants are in poor shape and have inadequate regulation and accountability of nuclear waste. Perhaps greater regulation exist in the United States, but regulation on a global level must occur to prevent the ever present threat of some terrorist organization unleashing dirty bomb. Unfortunately, and until the oil barons invest in wind or solar power, the world will continue to use the earth’s remaining oil. It is very odd that we still depend on the combustion engine—a 150 year old technology—when we have managed to place men on the moon 40 years ago and are on the brink of quantum computing and nanotechnology actually becoming a working concept.