Nuclear Uprates Have Long-Lead Talent, Too

by Chris Rakel on October 14, 2026 in Employer Insights, Energy & Power, Nuclear

The nuclear industry is used to planning around long-lead equipment. If a component needs to be ordered years before an outage, you don’t wait until six months out and hope one is available. You identify the need, understand the lead time and secure it early enough to protect the schedule.

 

I think we need to start looking at specialized engineering talent the same way.

 

That feels especially relevant right now. Google and Constellation recently announced an agreement that will support 890 MW of additional nuclear capacity across 11 units, with the first uprate expected in 2028. Amazon is backing another 190 MW at Calvert Cliffs. And the Department of Energy announced a conditional commitment of up to $4.2 billion to support Vistra’s planned uprates and modernization work at Beaver Valley, Davis Besse, and Perry.

 

That’s a lot of work moving forward in a relatively tight window. And the engineering work behind those projects starts well before the additional megawatts ever reach the grid.

 

The work starts long before the outage

 

When people think about an uprate, it’s easy to focus on the outage when major modifications are actually installed. But there’s a lot that has to happen before a project gets to that point.

 

That can include:

  • Design modifications
  • Engineering analyses
  • Licensing work and regulatory submittals
  • Equipment specifications and procurement
  • Project planning across future outage windows

Columbia Generating Station is a good example. Its extended power uprate is targeting completion in 2031, but engineering and preparation are already underway. Energy Northwest has said more than two dozen technical disciplines are involved in planning and sequencing the work across multiple outages.

 

One of the lessons Columbia has shared is to secure long lead components early. The same thinking should apply to some of the people needed to do the work.

 

The talent market doesn’t start when you open a requisition

 

Several uprate projects moving forward at once aren’t operating in completely separate labor markets. In many cases, they’re going to be looking for people with similar backgrounds during the same stretch of time.

 

We’re seeing that firsthand with multiple clients involved in uprate work. The pool of engineers with the right nuclear experience is already tight, and it gets even smaller once you start narrowing by discipline, system experience and project requirements. For example,finding an electrical engineer is one thing. Finding one with the right nuclear background, system experience and familiarity with the type of work being performed is another.

 

And uprates aren’t the only projects competing for those people. The existing fleet still has outages, maintenance, capital projects, plant modifications and license renewal work underway. Restarts and new nuclear projects are pulling from parts of that same talent pool too.

 

So if a project plan shows that a certain type of engineering work needs to begin in 2028, waiting until 2028 to think about the people doing it is probably too late.

 

This doesn’t mean hiring everyone years in advance

 

Planning earlier doesn’t mean putting an entire future project team on payroll before there’s enough work for them. It means understanding where the potential constraints are early enough to do something about them.

 

A few questions owners and engineering teams should be asking earlier in the process are:

  • What skills will we need 12, 18 or 24 months from now?
  • Which of those skills are readily available and which are already difficult to find?
  • What expertise do we have internally?
  • Where will we need engineering partners, contractors or other external support?
  • For the hardest roles, when do we actually need to start engaging people?

There’s a difference between knowing you’ll need an experienced engineer eventually and knowing how early you need to start looking for that person. The more specialized the requirement gets, the less useful the official requisition date becomes as the starting point.

 

The pipeline of work is getting easier to see

 

The recent announcements give the industry a pretty clear look at what’s coming.

 

DOE says the Vistra projects alone could support roughly 3,000 engineering, construction and planned outage jobs. Constellation says its agreement with Google represents more than $4.3 billion of investment across six nuclear sites.

 

Not all of those jobs will be hard to fill, and they obviously don’t all need to be filled today. But some of the specialized engineering work will need to happen years before the outage itself. At the same time, multiple owners, engineering firms and nuclear projects will be competing for some of the same experience.

 

That’s why I think workforce planning has to move further upstream as uprate activity grows.

 

The nuclear industry already knows that waiting too long to order a critical component can put a schedule at risk. Specialized engineering capacity deserves the same consideration.

 

If you’re looking for a partner to talk through your workforce strategy, reach out to us.