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.