A.R. Johnson Health, Science and Engineering Magnet School teacher Aleks Holiday is among those helping prepare some of today's students to be part of a potential work force for Plant Vogtle and its new reactors project.
Part of that effort, she said, is a collaboration with Augusta Technical College, which is working with the plant to offer a nuclear engineering associate's degree.
Ms. Holiday said she has met with an advisory board concerning the idea and sees potential for A.R. Johnson to feed into the new Augusta Tech program through a nationwide curriculum A.R. Johnson has adopted called Project Lead the Way.
"It's exciting," said Ms. Holiday, also an administrator at A.R. Johnson, who worked at Plant Vogtle in the 1980s.
Project Lead the Way promotes pre-engineering courses for middle and high school students and seeks to increase the number and quality of high school graduates becoming engineering technologists. Ms. Holiday said she has mentioned the potential for jobs at Vogtle to her students. The new reactors are expected to go online in 2016 and 2017.
"There's a need for nuclear engineers," she said, noting that she tells her students how more energy and power are going to be needed as the community continues to grow. One key point gets the students' attention.
"They are not at this point in life saying I might not be able to plug up and play my Nintendo because we don't have enough power. They're looking at how much money they can make," she said, added that jobs such as those at Vogtle can pay well.
According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a beginning radiation protection technician starts with a $63,000 salary, which can climb to $74,000 with experience. Instrument control technicians make between $67,000 and $77,000..
Carl Hammond-Beyer, a science teacher at A.R. Johnson, said students there also are taught about the environmental effect of generating nuclear energy, how nuclear energy is made and the structure of a nuclear power plant.
He said having Vogtle nearby helps reinforce such teaching.
"It makes it much more real for the kids," he said.
Mr. Hammond-Beyer said an A.R. Johnson teacher visited Vogtle and conducted a workshop there last summer.
"So she really benefited from that and put some of that information into our classes," he said.
Augusta Tech President Terry Elam said his college has contacted Vogtle officials and those from other power plants about developing an associate's degree tract called nuclear power plant technician maintenance and nonlicense operations personnel. He said officials hope to have it started next fall.
"It's primarily for our Vogtle facility," he said.
This fall, Aiken Technical College started a two-year program for radiation protection technicians. Aiken Tech marketing and public relations official Tom Slizewski said the program was developed in light of a study by a SRS Community Reuse Organization task force, which found there will be 10,000 nuclear jobs needing to be filled in this area in the next 20 years.
Reach Preston Sparks at (706) 828-3851 or preston.sparks@augustachronicle.com.
The Augusta Chronicle ©2010 Morris Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Back 
