After decades of pushing bachelor’s degrees, U.S. needs more tradespeople
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Experience is required in lieu of a degree. But, to your point, no degree is required.
We should be finding every opportunity to get people into jobs that don't require a degree but require specialized skills, as it sidesteps an inflated credential gate (Sidenote: I don't think college is entirely useless, but its value has been drastically disconnected from its cost for some time).
"A reactor operator license requires 3 years of experience as an operator for a nuclear reactor. This can be as a field operator, or can include military/naval time. No college degree required. A certain amount (Typically 1 year) must be at a similar plant design and 6 months must be on site before starting license class.
A senior reactor operator can be "instant" or "upgrade". The upgrade process is a reactor operator becoming a senior reactor operator and requires an RO to have at least 1 year of licensed experience. For instant candidates, you need an engineering degree, or certain types of naval experience as a watch officer, plus on site time, plus 3 years experience in the industry (or naval experience).
These time requirements are time required PRIOR to starting license class. The class itself is around 18-20 months."
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/3nm9ox/whats_it_lik...
Regarding the naval experience aspect, the utilities that hire navy veterans look for certain qualifications obtained while in the navy (EWS for enlisted folks in lieu of a degree).
With that said, I think there'd be great value in an organization advocating and enabled students to get into these "experience-in-lieu-of-degree" types of jobs you mention. Mike Rowe is doing this [1] as part of his mikeroweWORKS Foundation/"Profoundly Disconnected", but my opinion is this needs to be performed at scale nationwide (such as getting involved with school counselors at the high school level).
When nuclear power plants shut down, the ROs/SROs will not be too hard pressed to find new opportunities. The renewable energy plants that are replacing nuclear will still need to have their control rooms staffed, and operators will simply move into new roles with those utilities, or they'll get out of the generation business altogether and find a cushy transmission/distribution operator role, which isn't really dependent on the political climate with regards to generation technology.