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A casual observer at a nuclear power plant these days might notice a peculiar phenomenon: lots of receding hairlines and graying temples at the controls. Within the next decade, most of the nation's highly skilled nuclear specialists - engineers, plant operators, maintenance technicians, radiation chemists and fuel assembly designers - will become pensioners.

The retirement wave comes at a crucial time, just as the nation's utilities are preparing to build the first new nuclear plants in several decades.

The nuclear industry is scrambling to replace its aging work force, much as it refits old power plants with new valves and pumps. Job opportunities suddenly abound at companies that design the plants, at the regulatory agency that licenses and inspects reactors, at the consulting firms brought in to navigate the complex licensing process and at contractor shops used for maintenance and construction.

In North Carolina alone, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy in Wilmington has hired 500 workers in the past three years and could add up to 900 more within five years. Duke Energy in Charlotte is hiring 200 a year. Progress Energy in Raleigh hired 140 last year and plans to add as many this year.

The exodus of a generation of highly skilled senior workers is creating a wide open job market in an industry presumed moribund only a few years ago. To keep up with job demand, university nuclear engineering departments have quadrupled enrollment in the past decade to about 2,000 students today.

NC State University's nuclear engineering department stuck it out through shrinking enrollments during the lean years and managed to avoid the fate of more than two dozen college nuclear departments that no longer exist.

The university's nuclear engineering department is experiencing record enrollment: 196 students in pursuit of lifetime job security, high pay and professional advancement.

Despite the lingering stigma of nuclear power, advocates feel vindicated by this reversal of fortune.

"These are the best of times," said Mohamed Bourham, the interim department head of nuclear engineering at N.C. State. "And we hope that this trend continues for the sake of humanity."

Optimism is high at N.C. State, where nuclear engineering students hone their skills on a small nuclear reactor on campus and gain experience during paid summer internships at Progress Energy and Duke Energy nuclear plants. By the time they graduate, the students select from an average of 3.5 job offers in a field with median salaries that can reach $92,000 a year.

NC State senior Mike Hershkowitz is a practical 22-year-old from Hagerstown, Md., who is set to graduate in December. Job security and high pay figure prominently in his choice of career, so much so that his parents refused to pay for Hershkowitz's first choice of study, international business, because he didn't speak a foreign language.

"There's going to be a mass retirement that's going to send salaries through the roof," said Hershkowitz, assessing his prospects in nuclear engineering.

Industry rebounds

All industries have ups and downs, but the prognosis for the country's nuclear industry had been especially bleak. Double-digit interest rates in the 1970s sent construction costs soaring during a period of ambitious expansion.

The 1979 meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania sealed the industry's fate, killing plans for about 60 nuclear reactors in various stages of planning and construction.

Hiring came to a standstill and a generation of nuclear workers sought their fortunes in more promising fields.

Today the average age of the nation's nuclear workers is about 50. Many will be eligible to start retirement at 55. Within five years, about 35 percent of the specialists who have been running U.S. nuclear plants for the past quarter-century - about 19,600 people - are expected to begin a mass retirement.

With the explosion in job opportunity, nuclear professionals are mobile again after years of stagnating in a low-turnover industry. Progress Energy is losing talent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, General Electric and Westinghouse, said Progress' chief nuclear officer, Jim Scarola. Utilities move quickly to sign promising students.

"The market is very competitive," Scarola said. "It's not uncommon to make a job offer before the Christmas vacation to a student who won't graduate until May."

Skilled craftsmen are especially in demand. Some can enter the nuclear field with only a high school diploma or a two-year college degree. After background checks, psychological profiling and training and certifications, maintenance technicians can eventually make about $66,000 a year performing tasks so precise that the standards are comparable to the aeronautical industry.

Safety's the key

At stake is the safe operation of the 104 nuclear reactors that provide 20 percent of the nation's electricity. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which monitors safety at those reactors, is seeking inspectors to review domestic nuclear plants, as well as investigators to ensure quality control at foreign manufacturers that will equip U.S. nuclear plants.

The commission hired 441 people last year and plans to add 600 more within three years.

"Work force development is shaping up to be one of the key challenges that both regulators and the industry will have to deal with over the next decade or two," said NRC Chairman Dale Klein during a recent visit to Raleigh.

Klein made a recruiting pitch to students at N.C. State's nuclear engineering department. "All this means that the NRC is probably the busiest we have been in our history," he said.

NC State sophomore Amber Smart is sampling a buffet of career options. The 20-year-old from Connelly Springs, who graduated from high school with a 4.0 grade point average, might continue in graduate school toward a career in medical physics, specializing in cancer detection.

But to keep on that course, she'll have to resist the temptation of multiple job offers. She will graduate from N.C. State with a wide range of experience: In the summer, she performed risk assessment for Duke Energy's nuclear division. She expects to spend this summer working at Duke's McGuire nuclear station in Mecklenburg County. She described her stint in statistics in the summer as very intense and demanding.

"I didn't realize there was so much paperwork involved in everything you do," Smart said. "The reason I wanted to work at a power plant ... [this summer] is because I wanted to know what that's like instead of working at an office."

Hershkowitz spent last summer as an intern at Progress Energy's Brunswick nuclear plant in Southport. This year he's applying for a summer stint at the utility's Shearon Harris nuclear plant in southwestern Wake County.

Action at Harris

Shearon Harris is at the epicenter of the nuclear renaissance. Progress Energy last month filed an application to build two new reactors at the site, where the existing single reactor has been generating electricity since 1987.

After spending a summer at the Brunswick facility, Hershkowitz describes Progress Energy's nuclear safety performance as wonderful and impeccable.

Hershkowitz acknowledges that nuclear engineering students are forced to become de facto ambassadors for an industry still stigmatized by Three Mile Island and feared by some.

"I get more stupid comments about making bombs than anything else," he said. " "Nuclear" is a scary word. When students ask what your major is, you always get that "Whoa!" reaction."

john.murawski@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-8932