(Illustration by Alex Cochran for Utah News Dispatch)
As Utah takes action to power up its nuclear ambitions, the next generation of workers needed for future reactors are mostly unprepared. In neighboring Idaho, which hosts the Idaho National Lab focused on nuclear research, the scenario is similar and keeps some state officials up at night trying to find solutions for what’s expected to become a booming workforce market.
Wendi Secrist, executive director at the Idaho Workforce Development Council, says her office keeps busy trying to figure out ways to grow the workforce to meet the needs of the nuclear energy industry amid its comeback propelled by the Trump administration.
If the U.S. Department of Energy wants to accomplish its goal to produce 400 gigawatts of nuclear energy by 2050, it’s going to need an additional 184,000 people in the nuclear industry, and that doesn’t include the additional 250,000 workers needed for construction, Secrist said, referencing a 2025 workforce study commissioned by the Department of Energy.
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“We need to start thinking about how are we going to build this, how many of those (184,000) jobs collectively should we be looking at being located here in the Intermountain West and preparing for,” Secrist said during the 2026 John Horan Health Physics Symposium the University of Utah hosted on Friday.
With nuclear projects coming to Utah, Cox hopes for rural jobs, but that’s no easy task
The same question has concerned Utah leaders as well. Gov. Spencer Cox said at a September energy conference that the recruiting challenges experienced by the industry so far are “terrifying.” He, however, remained hopeful about what the new openings would mean for communities in rural Utah and argued that incorporating work earlier into education may help ease that burden.
While states in the region could certainly look at the available projections, Secrist said, the best way to figure out how to respond to the coming boom in demand is to maintain discussions with nuclear companies about their expectations — but also their realities.
“Are they expecting that they’re going to hire an engineer with 12 years of experience? Well, that might be what they put on the job description. But what are they really doing? Because what does the market have available for them?” she said. “And so being able to take all of that information in and start building out a workforce plan is what we have to do.”
Utah has been laying the foundation to allocate more funds to energy jobs that are considered in high demand, but has also announced plans to build a nuclear “energy ecosystem” in Brigham City, which is expected to include a workforce training center.
Following a nationwide trend of decreasing birthrates, even in Utah, the Idaho Workforce Development Council is also thinking about how to work with fewer people entering the workforce, Secrist said.
“It’s not going to just work itself out. We have to be intentional. We have to be thinking about not only are we building the right programs, but are we getting people into the right programs?” she said. “So we have to be really, really efficient with the people that we have, and we have to be thinking about how are we going to attract more people.”
In Idaho, for example, there have been some initiatives led by the national lab to create nuclear trades programs and a nuclear technology associate’s degree, with “a lot of outreach,” Secrist said.
Idaho is also looking to make nuclear industry jobs exciting for students earlier in their academic trajectories with initiatives meant to create gateways for those encountering challenges in STEM programs, she said. Like in Utah, the hope is that rural communities begin a nuclear workforce culture.
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