Growing the nuclear talent in Texas
The University of Texas–Austin has released a report, Cultivating Homegrown Nuclear Talent in Texas: Workforce Development Recommendations for Advanced Nuclear Development, which emphasizes general actions needed for the state to meet the near-term demand for workers in the nuclear industry.
The report was prepared by a group of more than 50 stakeholders from the nuclear power industry, educational institutions, labor groups, and state agencies based on the findings of the 2025 Texas Nuclear Workforce Development Workshop, which was convened at the University of Texas–Austin to align these stakeholders on actionable recommendations.
Three actions: To improve the workforce pipeline, the report recommends the following:
- Employers must move beyond advisory roles and directly invest in talent development.
- State agencies must send clear policy signals regarding nuclear workforce priorities.
- Labor and education must expand their pipelines, capacity, and programs.
Structural weaknesses: The report describes several structural weaknesses in Texas’s current nuclear workforce ecosystem:
- Because there is no central hub linking education, industry, and policy, programs operate in silos, and credentials are not portable.
- While community colleges offer generic programs on plant operations, there are few nuclear‑specific tracks.
- Graduate programs are small, and mid-career engineers are difficult to recruit because of competition from the semiconductor and aerospace sectors.
- Radiation protection programs are undersized or inactive.
- Nuclear science is nearly nonexistent in statewide STEM outreach at the K-12 levels.
According to the report, these weaknesses “create misalignment across tiers (craft trades, technicians, engineers), across regions, and across agencies.” For example, although future reactors are planned in the state’s rural Gulf Coast and Panhandle areas, nuclear educational programs are concentrated in urban areas like Austin and Houston.
Recommendations: The report provides recommendations that lay out strategic actions organized by stakeholder group, impact, and feasibility:
- For industry and employers—Develop professional education programs focused on nuclear quality assurance; adapt existing power-generation training programs to be nuclear-focused; provide scholarships and stipends for nuclear-facing courses; develop continuing legal education programs for regulatory compliance; and scale outreach to middle- and high-school students and parents.
- For state government agencies—Leverage available higher education data to track and publish in-state nuclear credential awards; leverage fellowship programs to place early-career nuclear professionals in legislative offices; create a postsecondary radiation technician certificate program; develop a high school nuclear program of study; broadly refine K-12 program to include nuclear; and appropriate funding to create a centralized portal for nuclear workforce programs.
- For educational institutions—Apply nuclear wrappers (one-on-one coaching sessions with professionals) to aligned community college/trade school programs in welding, safety, and pipefitting; expand physical space for Joint Training Alliance Training Centers to accommodate more talent into apprenticeship-pipeline programs; scale reactor operator pipelines at research reactors; and build more university research reactors and digital twins.
De-risk deployment: The report concludes that Texas needs to act now to address the talent supply gap, build a plan of action to “de‑risk” advanced nuclear deployment, and ensure that the right skills are available when and where they’re needed.
