In The News

Five area institutions are getting $5 million to better develop the area’s nuclear workforce and help meet a goal of producing 80 plutonium pits per year by 2030.

Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration in the U.S. Department of Energy, was surrounded by the heads of the five institutions – Augusta and Aiken technical colleges, Augusta University and the University of South Carolina’s Aiken and Salkehatchie campuses – along with two U.S. congressmen and numerous other officials when she made the announcement Monday at Aiken Tech.

“As many of you know, our mission at Savannah River Site will be growing, not decreasing,” Gordon-Hagerty said. “The Department of Energy and NNSA are committed to this partnership and helping sustain the great work being done.”

The grant doubles the current annual funding for a regional nuclear careers program administered by the Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization, which since 2016 has received $1 million per year to coordinate programs across the institutions, the NNSA said in a news release.

Workforce development is vital to the area’s mission, including the planned repurposing of the former Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility into a plutonium pit production facility, Gordon-Hagerty said.

“The plutonium pit mission, and congressmen (Joe) Wilson and (Rick) Allen have been instrumental in all this, given the president’s 2018 nuclear posture review, the United States determined that we needed to have a resilient monitoring structure for our nuclear deterrent,” Gordon-Hagerty said.

“We need to prepare to produce up to 80 pits per year by 2030, producing not less than 30 per year at Los Alamos (N.M.) and producing not less than 50 pits per year at Savannah River Site,” she said.

Wilson, the South Carolina Republican who represents the area, said he was “a cheerleader for the Savannah River Site” while Allen, the Republican who represents the area across the river in Georgia, said Wilson had worked through the night last week on SRS-related legislation.

While the economy is growing rapidly, Allen said, “it could grow faster if we’d trained that workforce.”

Coursework funded through the program includes radiation protection technology, nuclear engineering technology, process engineering, environmental remediation, chemistry and physics with a concentration in nuclear science, welding and others.