A ‘hiring campaign’ is needed for SRS pit production. An aging workforce complicates things.

• By Colin Demarest cdemarest@aikenstandard.com
• December 10, 2021

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Constructing and ultimately operating a factory for nuclear weapon parts in South Carolina demands a “massive hiring campaign” at a time when the broader workforce is threatened by retirements and other upheavals, an executive with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions said Thursday.

Thousands of workers, including construction and operational staff, will be needed to realize the multibillion-dollar plutonium pit production footprint at the Savannah River Site, said SRNS Chief Operating Officer Dennis Carr.

Striking the right balance between the new guard and the old – fresh faces versus grayed beards – will be tough. In the next five years, a number of industry vets will leave “this workforce, and we’ve got to get prepared to transition over,” Carr said at the National Cleanup Workshop. “There’s a lot of challenges that come along with the way we learned operations and the way we conduct operations, and the way the new generations learn and the way that they’d like to conduct.”

The key to success, he suggested, is attracting, retaining and ingraining the best candidates. Commitment to the mission, he added, is also important.

“There is a gap at our site,” Carr said. “We have that group that’s one to five years, and then we have that group that’s 25 to 35 years.”

Approximately 1,800 workers would be employed when construction of the pit hub – the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility – hits its stride, according to a September 2020 study published by the National Nuclear Security Administration. Another 1,134 indirect jobs are expected to be generated in the surrounding region.

At a separate industry conference earlier this year, Carr acknowledged the effects of the silver tsunami, a metaphor used to describe an aging population inching ever-closer to retirement. 

“The days of all of us sitting down and memorizing a procedure, those days are over,” Carr said at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit. “So we’ve moved into the YouTube platforms,” simulations and virtual reality.

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions President and CEO Stuart MacVean in 2018 said his team launched a recruitment campaign in the face of a “retirement cliff.” The newer generations, he noted at the time, want “to come to work and enjoy what they’re doing.”

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, led by Fluor, manages the Savannah River Site day to day and is intimately involved with the plutonium pit endeavor.