In early 2012, the North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) polled young professionals in the nuclear industry from all over the United States and Canada. The focus of this year’s survey was on issues that affect the careers of young professionals. Job satisfaction and factors that affect satisfaction and career growth are hot topics for young professionals in the nuclear industry, employers, students, and potential new hires. This survey builds on topics and issues that have been studied by NA‐YGN since the organization’s first major survey in 2004. The survey report was issued on May 14, 2012 and it contains detailed salary results, job satisfaction results, and insightful cross-analysis, among other things.

Analysis of the collected data provided new insights and confirmed existing conclusions about the young generation in the nuclear industry. In general, nuclear careers offer advancement opportunities as well as respectable salaries. 85% of respondents are satisfied or very satisfied with their current job, and two‐thirds of respondents are not looking for a job change at this time. The top factors providing job satisfaction are advancement and growth opportunities, salary growth, and work‐life balance. The top reasons people are looking for new jobs are lack of advancement and growth opportunities, slow salary growth, and lack of challenging work. It is important to note the correlation between advancement opportunities and salary in the young generation’s job satisfaction and lack of job satisfaction. It is also important to note that while work‐life balance is very important to the young generation, the majority of survey respondents reported that they are not eligible for flexible arrangements or alternate work hours. The survey examined the motivation of young professionals to work in the nuclear industry after the incidents at Fukushima. Three quarters of survey respondents indicated that Fukushima did not change in their motivation to work in nuclear science and technology, and most of the remaining quarter indicated that they were more motivated to work in the industry following the event. Questions about NA-YGN were examined and the report found a correlation between those satisfied with NA‐YGN and those satisfied with their jobs, which indicates that NA‐YGN is succeeding in its goal of increasing retention of young generation employees. The full text of the survey contains many additional insights and conclusions, available for your reading pleasure here.

In summary, members of NA‐YGN have a passion for nuclear science and technology and are actively engaged in their careers. An overwhelming majority of young professionals are satisfied with their jobs, their companies, and with NA‐YGN. Based on the results of this survey, is it clear that the young generation is actively preparing to become the industry’s future leaders.

The North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) teamed up with Clean Energy Insight for the 2011 NA-YGN Drawing Contest.  In light of the events at Fukushima Nuclear Plant, the contest focused on nuclear power on an international scale with the theme,  “Roddy Nuclear Powers the World.”  Roddy is a nuclear fuel pellet, and an NA-YGN mascot, and he is predominantly featured in this year’s drawing contest posters.

NA-YGN would like to thank all chapters for their participation. Your support of this program ensures that the new “young generation” has clear information on nuclear power, and can make informed decisions about our energy future.

This year, voting took place on the CEI website in order to expand our voting audience and to draw attention to this site. Over 250 visitors to the site voted, and for that, we thank you!

We are proud to announce the contest winners:

First Place: Giovanni Valforte, Myrtle Avenue Elementary

First Runner-Up: Olivia Whitacre, St. Teresa of Avila

Second Runner-Up: Matthew McHugh, St. Teresa of Avila

Winners will receive an NA-YGN t-shirt, science kit, and books for themselves and their schools.

We encourage all NA-YGN Chapters to participate in the 2012 Drawing Contest, which will be 100% digital for the first time. If you have any feedback or questions about the Drawing Contest, or would like to assist in 2012, please contact Andrea Davis of the NA-YGN Triangle Chapter.

UPDATE: 5-17-12 - Pictures of award winners added.

Special “Thank you” to the Pittsburgh Westinghouse NA-YGN Chapter for their success in the 2011 NA-YGN Drawing Contest from all of your NA-YGN peers.

Giovanni Valforte (Myrtle Ave Elementary) – National 1st prize winner pictured with Westinghouse volunteer and teachers

Students from St. Teresa of Avila nominated in the top 10 drawings submitted to nationals by Westinghouse. Standing with Westinghouse volunteers.

2nd (Olivia Whitacre) and 3rd (Matthew McHugh) place national winners - students from St. Teresa of Avila with their parents

Reference: http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2012/03/nrc-approve-col-for-vc-summer.html

Julie Ezell, NA-YGN Member

Six years out of college and I never dreamed I would be here - working on a project to license and construct two new nuclear units.

Working at SCE&G has afforded me the opportunity to be involved in many aspects of the project.  I was part of the team that wrote and submitted the COL application to the NRC, answered requests for additional information, participated in site audits and inspections, participated in preparations for ACRS and Mandatory hearings and serve as the lead for the ITAAC (Inspections, Tests, Analyses and Acceptance Criteria) program.

Life on the project has been busy, dynamic, and challenging with frequent trips to Washington, D.C. for public meetings with the NRC and sometimes working late nights and weekends to meet deadlines.

One thing that still amazes me every day is the collaborative and open nature of the industry.  I interact daily with utilities from all over the southeast who are also pursuing the opportunity to build an AP1000 to share information and work together.  The thing I enjoy most about my job is the dedicated team that I have the opportunity to work with.  Many of the people on the project were involved with the construction and start-up of Unit 1 and bring that experience to the team.  It has been very rewarding for me to watch the site preparations progress in the six years I have been here, and one of the more impressive activities was the assembly of the Heavy Lift Derrick (HLD).  I am excited to be a part of this team and am looking forward to the affirmation session for the VC Summer Units 2 and 3 Mandatory Hearing Decision, the culmination of many years of hard work from many parties.

VC Summer Nuclear Plant new construction aerial view.

Excavation for the Unit 2 turbine building. The large pipes you see are for circulating coolant water from the condenser to the cooling towers.

Excavation for the Unit 3 nuclear island--where the reactor will be located.

Assembly of the lower containment bowl support structure.

Construction continues on the foundations for Unit 2's cooling tower.

Bigge Heavy Lift Derrick on-site. The world's largest super crane.

Chicago Bridge & Iron employees welding the lower containment bowl.

One year ago today, the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami struck Japan.  The tragic event resulted in 15,850 deaths, over 6000 injuries, more than 3000 missing and countless billions in property damage.  While this disaster weighed heavily upon the heart of so many, it particularly resonates with those of us in the nuclear industry.  As we know, the tsunami challenged many of Japan’s nuclear power plants and precipitated a series of events leading to significant damage of the Fukushima Dai-ichi site.

The leadership of the U.S. nuclear power industry has developed a steering committee to oversee the implementation of lessons learned from Fukushima.  Concurrently, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. government oversight agency, has engaged in rigorous evaluations of the U.S. fleet of plants as well as an action plan for adding additional layers of safety precautions across the board.  The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has completed the Fukushima Task Force Report that confirms the safety of Canadian nuclear power plants as well as providing recommendations to further enhance safety in response to this event.  The global nuclear power community is unified in the continual effort to share lessons learned.  As the next generation of leaders in the nuclear power industry, NA-YGN is committed to our shared goal of ensuring the events at Fukushima are not repeated in our future or in our children’s future.

North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) has spent the past year working to learn from the events in Japan.  Since March of 2011, NA-YGN has coordinated webinars and held numerous professional development sessions to educate young professionals about the events at Fukushima.  Our members reached out to speak with the public about the events at Fukushima:  from our 4^th and 5^th grade drawing contest presentations all the way to Hill Day meetings with policymakers at the U.S. Capitol and Canadian Parliament.  NA-YGN will continue to promote similar activities in the coming year and maintain a leadership role in ensuring safety and security within our industry.

On this day, I ask each of you to keep in your thoughts and prayers the people of Japan who have lost so much.  We should also reflect upon what each of us as an individual can do in this next year to engage the public in intelligent discourse about the events at the Fukushima Dai-ichi site and the commitment our industry has for a safe future.  It will only be through respectful dialogue and a continued commitment to safe operation that we will be able to reinvigorate the public faith in nuclear science and technology.  The Japanese people have already demonstrated the strength and resilience to rebuild.  Let us take their example as an inspiration for our own efforts looking forward as young professionals in nuclear.

Duncan Robinson

President, North American - Young Generation in Nuclear

Recently, North American Young Generation in Nuclear Chapters from all over the continent shared their passion for their field of work with their local communities during National Nuclear Science Week (Jan 23rd - 27th, 2012).  Shown below are some examples of how two NA-YGN Chapters got the word out and celebrated National Nuclear Science Week (NNSW) by educating their local communities about how they provide electricity to them safely and cheaply on a daily basis.

In order to advertise and get the word out on their NNSW efforts, NA-YGN’s First Energy Chapter created this flyer.  Thanks to Neil Brooks for sharing.

Also, the LaSalle Nuclear Station’s NA-YGN Chapter, outside of Chicago, Illinois, visited a local Elementary school to teach them about nuclear energy.  Here is a write-up from the LaSalle Station’s newsletter on the event:

LaSalle Station Celebrates Nuclear Science Week

NA-YGN members Amber Von Ruden and Brock Pollman went to McKinley School yesterday, January 24 to speak to eighty third grade students on Nuclear Science Week.

An interactive presentation was given to the students. “It is always great when we can get into the classroom,” Amber Von Ruden said. “The students were so excited to learn about nuclear science, which is just as exciting for us!”

In addition to the presentation, students were also given a NA-YGN cup and granola bars.

“We are so grateful to LaSalle Station for allowing these fantastic employees to come into the school and speak. The kids just loved it,” Principal Julie Prendergast said.

And here are some pictures of the event.  Enjoy:

It’s really great to see that these children had such a great time learning about nuclear science.  Congrats to the LaSalle Station volunteers for their successful event educating school children on nuclear science and its benefits.

Last year, Clean Energy Insight shared the 2011 NNSW efforts of the NA-YGN Chapter at Sandia National Labs here.

Please feel free to comment and share some of your experiences from this year’s National Nuclear Science Week below.  We’d love to hear from you.  Thanks for all of your hard work and dedication to the field of nuclear science, NA-YGN’ers.

Two North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) members recently offered their thoughts and advice in a guest article on the ANS Nuclear Cafe Blog, encouraging young members of the nuclear energy industry to take complete personal responsibility of  their professional development.

Learning to take charge of my professional and personal development has been the biggest lesson I’ve learned during my first 4 years in the nuclear energy industry, and I felt this article was relevant to my experiences and needs as a young member thus far.  I hope that it helps other NA-YGN members get a head start on their development.

Great job on the article, Jennifer and Elizabeth - although it was published a day too late to help me with my annual appraisal with my supervisor!

Development: Taking Charge of Your Career

Posted on January 18, 2012
By Elizabeth McAndrews-Benavides and Jennifer Varnedoe

Every member of the nuclear industry has a responsibility to focus on his or her own career development as a component of continuous improvement. While this is good advice, young professionals often struggle with how to identify these development opportunities. The question of how to overcome this challenge spirited discussion at the 2011 Young Professionals Conference.

“Young professionals are told to ask for opportunities and additional responsibilities in order to develop ourselves, but we’re never given examples of what opportunities our employers think we should be looking for,” said Adam Nygaard, a member of the North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN). “I believe that career development is the primary responsibility of the individual, but employers are stakeholders as well. It’s good that they have finally provided guidance and are working toward closing the knowledge and experience gap in our industry.”

The good news is that young professionals no longer have to guess at the answer to this question. The U.S. electric industry, through the Center for Energy Workforce Development, has created two new resources to help industry leaders, educators, and young professionals navigate development.

These resources are competency models that lay out the knowledge, skills, and abilities that every new employee should master to become a fully competent energy worker. The energy industry is using these models to develop new energy education programs and to improve industry training to ensure that there are qualified energy workers readily available to replace retirees.

“Competency models are a great resource for young professionals to reference before heading into their annual appraisals with their supervisors,” said Gale Hauck, co-chair of the ANS Young Members Group. “These models make it easy for employees to identify their own development gaps and to ask supervisors to include the appropriate opportunities to close these gaps in their personal development plans.”

The Energy Industry Competency Model: Generation, Transmission and Distribution is made up of stacked tiers divided by blocks representing competencies. Each block represents a focus area that needs to be developed in new energy workers. This resource was developed to help non-licensed operators, maintenance personnel, and technicians.

The Engineering Competency Model builds off of the previous model and replaces the top three tiers with engineering-specific competencies. Once an engineer meets all of the entry level competencies they can move on to the 3+-year-experienced engineer competencies.

Hauck said, “It’s nice to have a development road map. Young professionals no longer have to struggle to figure out what development opportunities they need, they can focus on being developed.”

Chris Hearn, U.S. Affairs chair of NA-YGN, added, “Now that these resources are available, conference planning committees and local chapters of NA-YGN can use this information to design professional development sessions. All you have to do is look at the competency model and identify which competency your members need the most help with.”

North American Young Generation in Nuclear is a professional society for those working in nuclear science and technology. It has 8,500 members and 97 local chapters. The ANS Young Members Group is a technical group of the American Nuclear Society with more 1,000 members.

---

Jennifer Varnedoe is chair of the ANS Young Members Group. She is a project engineer with Advanced Programs at GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy. She has been an ANS member since 2007 and is a guest contributor to the ANS Nuclear Cafe.

Elizabeth is past president of NA-YGN. She is manager of Industry Infrastructure at the Nuclear Energy Institute. In this role she is focused on work force development and supply chain issues for the nuclear industry. Prior to this job, she worked for Constellation Energy in its new nuclear division, UniStar Nuclear.

How often do you think about where the electricity you use to power your lights, computer and television comes from? Chances are not often, if ever.

This past October, the Michigan American Nuclear Society hosted an essay contest as part of Careers in Energy Week asking high school students to do just that. The “Get into Nuclear Energy” essay contest targeted raising awareness of nuclear energy careers among Michigan high school students. The contest asked students to explain why nuclear energy workers have and continue to improve our local communities. The contest, which was funded by an Entergy Nuclear grant, awarded the first, second, and third place winners with an iPad, iTouch, and iPod Nano, respectively. The contest also awarded the schools with the highest percentage of participation with a monetary donation to their science department.

The contest ran over a two-week period and resulted in the society receiving over 400 essays. The contest winners were spread across the state and even into the Upper Peninsula! The winning essays will be posted on our website. The first, second, and third place student winners are as follows:

1. Megan Locatis, Allegan High School;
2. Carolyn Payson, Battle Creek Math and Science Cetner;
3. Jessica Barjaktarovich, Macomb Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Here is a link to their essays.

The schools with the highest participation were:

• Big Bay De Noc High School,
• Columbia Central High School, and
• Charyl Stockwell Preparatory Academy.

Having read over 100 essays myself, I can say that I was immensely excited to see the amount of research and effort that the students and teachers put into exploring careers options in the nuclear field. The essays highlighted the important impact nuclear energy workers have on ensuring that our communities stay functional through both the production of electricity and philanthropic work. The overall goal of the contest was to expose high school students to careers in the nuclear sciences and hopefully spark an early interest in future career choices.

The Michigan American Nuclear Society is looking forward to hosting another essay contest to ring in National Nuclear Science Week. This time around the contest wil ask high school students to write a persuasive letter to their local Congressperson or Senator describing why nuclear energy should continue be a part of our national energy portfolio.

During last week’s Young Professionals Congress, dozens participated in a new training activity designed to solicit tacit knowledge from experienced professionals. Members from both the American Nuclear Society’s Young Members Group (ANS-YMG) and North America Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) created this activity.

“This training was timely,” said Jennifer Varnedoe Chair of the ANS-YMG. “Many in the nuclear sector are nearing retirement and young professionals need to capture their tacit knowledge before they leave.”

Duncan Robinson, President of NA-YGN, said “that the young generation needs to take ownership and find ways to mitigate issues with knowledge transfer.” They will be the stakeholders that will have to deal with the ramifications if this is done poorly.

Finding ways to improve the capturing of knowledge was a goal for the developers of this training. “Many times, all it takes is for a young professional to ask for information,” said Michael Hope, one of the NA-YGN training developers.

The Power of Question Asking taught participants how to ask open ended questions to gain tacit knowledge. The participants practiced this skill by asking questions to five facilitators while playing a competitive game where the goal was to see who could complete a Lego construction project the fastest. Participants had to ask the facilitators for help because they weren’t provided all of the instructions to complete the Lego log cabin.

The five facilitators roll played different characters to allow participants the opportunity to practice formulating open ended questions for different audiences which added a layer of difficulty. Peter Caracappa, Chair of the 2012 Young Professionals Congress Embedded Topical, said “it was amazing to see the participants trying to formulate open ended questions. It was obvious during the training that this is a skill that the young generation must cultivate.”

NA-YGN and the ANS-YMG plan to make the lesson plan and Lego kits available for use at future meetings.

North American Young Generation in Nuclear is a professional society for those working in nuclear science and technology; they have 8,500 members and 96 local chapters. The Young Members Group is a technical group of the American Nuclear Society with over 1,000 members.

Peter Carracapa KT&R DLA Facilitator describes his role in the activity

KT&R DLA Participant describes his experience

North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) recently held their 13th Annual “Roddy Nuclear” Drawing contest all over North America.  Roddy Nuclear is a nuclear fuel pellet cartoon character who can fit into the palm of a child’s hand.  In fact, Roddy provides as much energy as almost two-thousand pounds of coal and 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas!

NA-YGN members used Roddy’s adventures to present the benefits of nuclear energy to over 1,000 4th and 5th grade students in this year’s contest.  The theme for the contest was “Roddy Nuclear Powers the World.“  Students were asked to submit drawings inspired by the theme and what they learned during the presentations.

NA-YGN would like to thank all of it’s participating members along with all of the educators who contributed to the success of this year’s contest.  Now, we just have to pick a winner!

Click here to vote for the winner:

2011 NA-YGN Drawing Contest Voting

The voting deadline is January 13th, 2012.

The winners (1st place, Runner-up, First Runner up) will be announced during National Nuclear Science Week — January 23rd, 2012.

Click HERE to view last year’s 2010 Drawing Contest Winners.

On November 1, 2011, several North American Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) members attended the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) public meeting for the potential restart of Dominion Power’s North Anna Power Station (NAPS). The purpose of the meeting was for the NRC and Dominion to provide members of the public with the status of inspections and current information for NAPS after the August 23rd earthquake in Mineral, VA.

Dominion Energy's North Anna Nuclear Power Station

The first half of the meeting allowed Dominion and the NRC to discuss their findings. To date, neither Dominion nor the NRC has identified any significant damage to essential safety systems of NAPS. Inspections and reviews continue to ensure the safety of the plants prior to restart. No date has yet been targeted for restart of the plants.

The second half of the meeting involved public commentary and questions for the NRC and Dominion. Public responses and questions varied, but several audience members indicated mistrust of Dominion and the NRC to ensure the safety of the power plant. The telling moment of NA-YGN’s presence occurred when one member of the audience questioned whether Dominion had paid individuals to come-out wearing t-shirts and buttons that advocated for nuclear power. There was a loud response of “NO” from the crowd and a cynical rebuttal from the questioning individual: “I guess you all must just be fans of nuclear power.”

As hard as it may be for some to understand, there are people that are proud to show support for nuclear power.