Teachers and others visited the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management’s contractor UCOR for briefings and tours of cleanup efforts. (Photo: DOE)
Nearly 300 public school teachers, career counselors, and school administrators from 11 middle and high schools in the Oak Ridge region of Tennessee recently attended a nuclear opportunities workshop. The event was held to provide information about careers available for students in the years ahead related to the cleanup mission of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management.
Attendees learned how OREM’s work removes contaminated facilities, soil, and other materials; enables modernization at the DOE’s research and national security sites; and creates economic opportunities that attract new industries to Oak Ridge. According to OREM, cleanup achievements and economic opportunities are connected: Oak Ridge's cleanup of the East Tennessee Technology Park has led to the siting of the nation’s first nuclear innovation hub.
Attendees also had the chance to spend a day touring DOE sites in the area.
Events: The workshop was created with support from Roane Alliance, which promotes area economic development, job creation, and workforce development partnerships. Roane County is one of two counties that contains portions of the DOE’s 30,000-acre Oak Ridge Reservation, where OREM’s cleanup takes place.
Roane Alliance and Roane Public Schools’ Career & Technical Education staff assembled a packed agenda for school staff groups to visit UCOR, the DOE’s cleanup contractor at Oak Ridge; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; the Y-12 National Security Complex; the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Clinch River site; and Roane State Community College, where they heard from college and business leaders about future workforce needs and development programs.
Quotable: “Talking with our education partners, we found that teachers wanted to learn more about the current opportunities at Oak Ridge, and also the future jobs with new commercial nuclear investments, like Orano USA, and the facilities now under construction,” said Jennifer Brown, Roane Alliance Education & Workforce Development director.
Roane County Secondary Supervisor of Schools Lance Duff was one of the drivers for the workshop. He noted that the event provided attendees with information to share with students to help them focus on opportunities available to them. “We know there will be significant hiring in the Oak Ridge corridor over the next five years due to retirements and new facilities being built, so our teachers and counselors can be the most influential voices for students and parents to encourage them to pursue these great career options,” said Duff. “We know there will continue to be needs for scientists and engineers, but we walked away learning about the skilled craft labor, operators, construction jobs, and support positions needed today and in the future. Several teachers told me, ‘I had no idea about all of these job opportunities.’”
