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If you have a background and experience in the engineering and technical fields, you may be wondering if a career in nuclear energy is right for you. Why should you switch to a career in the nuclear industry? Nuclear energy is making a comeback in the United States and worldwide.

With the price of fossil fuels and their toll on the environment increasing daily, world leaders and electrical providers are recognizing that nuclear energy is a reliable, emissions-free source of electrical power generation that is vital to meeting the world’s energy demands while reducing greenhouse gases. New nuclear plants are already under construction in Finland (where a new reactor is being built by AREVA NP Inc.) and are being proposed in China, France, Great Britain and the U.S. With this renewed interest in nuclear power will come more jobs, in a field that will be in demand for the next century.

“Nuclear power is one of the safest, cleanest sources of power in the world, and we need more of it here in America,” President George W. Bush at the National Small Business Conference, Washington, D.C., April 27, 2005.

Nuclear energy preserves the environment.

Nuclear energy has perhaps the lowest impact on the environment—including air, land, water, and wildlife—of any energy source, because it does not emit harmful gases, isolates its waste from the environment, and requires less area to produce the same amount of electricity as other sources. For instance, solar and wind farms must occupy substantially more land, and must be sited in geographically unpopulated areas far from energy demand. To build the equivalent of a 1,000-megawatt nuclear plant, a solar park would have to be larger than 35,000 acres, and a wind farm would have to be 150,000 acres or larger. By contrast, the Millstone Units 2 and 3 nuclear power plants in Connecticut have an installed capacity of over 1,900 megawatts of power on a 500-acre site designed for three nuclear plants.

Many nuclear power plant operators also conserve the environment by developing wildlife sanctuaries and nature parks on plant sites, protecting their surrounding areas for endangered species and biodiversity and cooling the clean water discharged from the plant to protect aquatic life and preserve water quality.

By working in the nuclear industry, you’ll contribute to an emissions-free, economical source of electrical power that preserves the world’s air quality and reduces our impact on greenhouse gases, a contributing factor to the global warming crisis. In the nuclear energy industry, you can make discoveries every day that will affect the future of our planet for years to come!

Nuclear energy is competitive with other industries.
At AREVA NP Inc., you’ll find that our benefits to employees, such as health care, insurance, retirement planning, education and career development, are comparable to those you’ll find in other technical or industrial fields. Moreover, salaries in the nuclear energy industry are highly competitive with other types of electrical power generation. For example, average annual earnings for fossil fuel power plant operators were approximately $46,500 in 1999, whereas nuclear power plant operators earned an average of about $56,200 annually in 1998. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)