Governor Cox aims to double Utah’s energy generation in the next 10 years. Part of the state’s policy, a strategy outlined in Operation Gigawatt, will support clean and reliable energy, including nuclear.

“We’ll use all types of energy to achieve this,” said Jeremy Pearson, director of the Utah Office of Energy Development’s Advanced Nuclear and Energy Institute, during his talk at the symposium. “Nuclear can be a small part in the beginning, and then increasingly become a large part [of energy production] in Utah.”

The state is working with nuclear companies on small, advanced systems, especially microreactors, that can provide a proof of concept before potentially deploying at a larger scale. Some projects are reusing existing infrastructure, including retrofitted coal plants, which may help transition today’s grid toward a nuclear-heavy future.

In the U.S., nuclear fuel only uses about 3-5% of the fuel’s potential energy. The waste still holds a treasure-trove of uranium, plutonium and other beneficial byproducts, like the isotopes used in medicine. The state is aiming for a complete redesign where fuel is reused, waste is reduced and value is extracted at all stages.

“It’s like going to a campfire and just burning the bark and throwing away the rest of the wood,” Pearson told the attendees. “If we have the technology to separate the [isotopes], those are even more valuable than fuel.”

The state is partnering with nuclear companies to build pilot facilities that test recycling methods. France has been doing this for decades and their system reuses 96% of spent fuel. So far, the U.S. has been reticent. The same technology that makes recycling easier also makes nuclear weapons development easier. But researchers have been exploring safer, alternative techniques: Michael Simpson, metallurgical engineering professor at the U, is developing “pyroprocessing” that mixes heavy elements into extracted plutonium. Attractive for fuel, but not for weapons.

To Pearson, economics are an even bigger hurdle than proliferation concerns.

“In some cases, it’s easier to just mine [new uranium ore] than to recycle,” he said. “My feeling is that if we recover those other valuable isotopes, you increase the economic argument.”

It will take “deep conversations” to balance the economics and safety of nuclear recycling, Pearson said.

Speakers delivered one message again and again: The challenge isn’t whether we can build nuclear, it’s whether we can build the workforce fast enough to make it happen.

To meet expansion goals, the U.S. will need an additional 184,000 people in the nuclear industry, not including the 250,000 needed for construction, said Wendi Secrist, executive director of the Idaho Workforce Development Council citing a 2025 Department of Energy study. Not just engineers, but electricians, technicians and construction workers are just as important. Recruitment can be difficult because most proposed sites for new reactors are in remote locations and workers are living on-site for weeks, hours away from cities.

Decisions must be made years before demand peaks. Training new workers has a built-in delay, as apprenticeships and academic programs take multiple years to finish. Idaho is being creative by starting STEM outreach young, creating programs to get students through math and creating faster career pathways.

“We can think through who we need with what types of skills, but where are the people going to come from?” Secrist asked the symposium audience. “It’s not going to just work itself out. We have to be intentional.”

This is an Intermountain West problem, she continued. Utah, Idaho and Wyoming should have shared workforces, industry partners and infrastructure, like the Idaho National Laboratory.

There’s a decades-long workforce shortage in radiation safety, and it’s getting worse, according to Tom Johnson, health physics program director at Colorado State University.

“If everything goes as planned, there’s going to be a hundred odd new reactors in the next 10 years,” he said at the symposium. “We are in no way prepared for that.”

Radiation safety, also known as health physics, is the science of protecting people from radiation, including dose assessment, contamination control and monitoring of environmental exposures. While nuclear engineers design and use radiation systems, health physicists ensure those systems are safe for workers, patients and the public. Ideally, radiation safety professionals complete graduate-level education to understand the underlying principles.

As nuclear and medical radiation demands are increasing and relatively few health physicists receive advanced degrees each year, the industry is relying on training technicians to close the expertise gap. Folks in these positions go through a 6-week training program that prepares them for routine tasks, Johnson said. Although this is sufficient for many nuclear applications, failure to fully understand radiation types, exposure pathways, or unexpected conditions can create serious safety gaps, he said. In other words, training tells you what to do, and education tells you why you do it.

“Quite frequently, a health physicist with limited training may not even recognize when there’s a problem,” he said.

The workforce pool has been shrinking for decades due to spending cuts and program closures. Health physics degrees dropped sharply in the mid-1990s, corresponding with the Department of Energy reducing its support for health physics education. It’s never recovered; today, only a small number of accredited programs still exist, and they’re at risk of shutting down.

New reactor designs and technology require even more specialized radiation safety expertise, Johnson said. Without more educational support, even fewer students will enter the field. Combined with a looming wave of retirements, the safety gap will continue to get worse.