I have been working in power plants for over ten years. Entry level plant operators can make six figures with a high school diploma. At a decent plant, you’ll be balls to the wall busy on 5-10% of your shifts, pretty steady with general routine stuff that’s mostly just confirming that shit is normal 80% of the time, and the remaining 10% is in outages which can vary between busting your ass and waiting around but it’s rough either way because you might be working every day for a few weeks. Every plant I’ve been to does 12 hour shifts with pretty frequent changes between days and nights, which is by far the worst part. You’ll have an easier time getting in and moving up if you are pretty good with STEM stuff, but you’re fine if you passed honors physics in high school. V=IR and PV=nRT will get you really far. Spatial reasoning skills are also really helpful.
I’m at a combined cycle natural gas plant where I started as an outside operator almost 3 years ago at $39.80/hour and am now a ZLD water treatment operator in the same plant at $52/hour; control room operators start at about $60/hour here. I had a really shitty 12 hour shift today so I earned every dime of that wage, but sometimes it’s only like 4-6 hours of work in a 12 hour shift and a bunch of reading or YouTube in between while monitoring everything. Even the tough shifts are kinda good sometimes because I get to work the puzzle part of my brain.
What starting jobs does your plant offer right now? Are they hiring? I’m not interested but I am wondering if your experience is colored at all by a different job market.
My plant in particular has a roster of only about 30 people, only about 5 of which are what I would call entry level. Right now we’re fully staffed, but every couple of years we get a few people who leave. We’ll have probably two retirements in the next couple of years, and who knows who will say fuck this place and go elsewhere. But this is all for in-house stuff. I got into the industry as a contractor with a few different companies making less money and running harder for a long while, so that made me a much more attractive candidate. But really I just carry myself well and know how to sell myself and appear respectable even though I feel like a 10 year old trapped in a 35 year old body most of the time. Idk what I’m doing half the time, but neither does anybody else in this stupid world lol.
A super easy way to get your foot in the door for the industry is to look into companies that support outages. It can be irregular work that requires travel, but companies always need bodies just to be a general laborer. You might just be carrying shit for “skilled” workers for a while but you get familiar with processes and can find advancement opportunities from there. I started with radiological decontamination and radiation protection for nuclear plant refuel outages. Most of those guys seem to have like an 8th grade education, so it’s pretty easy to stand out in a positive way and receive recognition.
Probably the best thing for my career to really get where I am was when I somehow talked my way into a job with a major company as a water treatment FSR to handle water treatment for a big nuclear plant. I learned a lot through that, and I’m still very much learning every day.
The real Simpsons joke is affording a big house with a garage, two cars, three kids, pets, and vacations on a single income from a high school education. My wife and I are a DINK couple each with associates degrees in a two bedroom apartment with no pets.
It was doable back in the day, especially if nuclear plant workers make as much as the OP says.
My family was exactly like the Simpsons in terms of what we could afford growing up and who was working. Although my dad worked in an auto factory as opposed to a nuclear plant.
He was first a line worker but then managed to be trained to repair machinery.
In the year 2024, it’s hard to fathom how that was at all possible to do, but times were different back then. I will say, I’m fairly certain that my parents were also in a ton of debt when I was growing up. It’s just that they used to give loans to everyone (hence the housing market crash in around 2009 or whenever it was).
I don’t think Doug invented it, but probably helped popularize it.
Yeah, I like Doug. Killer Tofu is unironically a fucking bop. But now that I’m older, Doug might have had some kind of social disorder or something lol. But he also has a ton of similarities to JD from Scrubs, another show I really liked.
I have been working in power plants for over ten years. Entry level plant operators can make six figures with a high school diploma. At a decent plant, you’ll be balls to the wall busy on 5-10% of your shifts, pretty steady with general routine stuff that’s mostly just confirming that shit is normal 80% of the time, and the remaining 10% is in outages which can vary between busting your ass and waiting around but it’s rough either way because you might be working every day for a few weeks. Every plant I’ve been to does 12 hour shifts with pretty frequent changes between days and nights, which is by far the worst part. You’ll have an easier time getting in and moving up if you are pretty good with STEM stuff, but you’re fine if you passed honors physics in high school. V=IR and PV=nRT will get you really far. Spatial reasoning skills are also really helpful.
I’m at a combined cycle natural gas plant where I started as an outside operator almost 3 years ago at $39.80/hour and am now a ZLD water treatment operator in the same plant at $52/hour; control room operators start at about $60/hour here. I had a really shitty 12 hour shift today so I earned every dime of that wage, but sometimes it’s only like 4-6 hours of work in a 12 hour shift and a bunch of reading or YouTube in between while monitoring everything. Even the tough shifts are kinda good sometimes because I get to work the puzzle part of my brain.
What starting jobs does your plant offer right now? Are they hiring? I’m not interested but I am wondering if your experience is colored at all by a different job market.
Did you have any experience prior to 3 years ago?
My plant in particular has a roster of only about 30 people, only about 5 of which are what I would call entry level. Right now we’re fully staffed, but every couple of years we get a few people who leave. We’ll have probably two retirements in the next couple of years, and who knows who will say fuck this place and go elsewhere. But this is all for in-house stuff. I got into the industry as a contractor with a few different companies making less money and running harder for a long while, so that made me a much more attractive candidate. But really I just carry myself well and know how to sell myself and appear respectable even though I feel like a 10 year old trapped in a 35 year old body most of the time. Idk what I’m doing half the time, but neither does anybody else in this stupid world lol.
A super easy way to get your foot in the door for the industry is to look into companies that support outages. It can be irregular work that requires travel, but companies always need bodies just to be a general laborer. You might just be carrying shit for “skilled” workers for a while but you get familiar with processes and can find advancement opportunities from there. I started with radiological decontamination and radiation protection for nuclear plant refuel outages. Most of those guys seem to have like an 8th grade education, so it’s pretty easy to stand out in a positive way and receive recognition.
Probably the best thing for my career to really get where I am was when I somehow talked my way into a job with a major company as a water treatment FSR to handle water treatment for a big nuclear plant. I learned a lot through that, and I’m still very much learning every day.
That’s insane. Good info though. Thanks for the details! If I ever need a career switch, I’ll consider it lol
Not gonna lie: When I started reading your comment, I was fairly sure this was gonna be some kind of Simpsons joke.
The real Simpsons joke is affording a big house with a garage, two cars, three kids, pets, and vacations on a single income from a high school education. My wife and I are a DINK couple each with associates degrees in a two bedroom apartment with no pets.
D’oh indeed, Homer. D’oh indeed…
The year is 2024, and we’re all Frank Grimes now: https://youtu.be/axHoy0hnQy8
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/axHoy0hnQy8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It was doable back in the day, especially if nuclear plant workers make as much as the OP says.
My family was exactly like the Simpsons in terms of what we could afford growing up and who was working. Although my dad worked in an auto factory as opposed to a nuclear plant. He was first a line worker but then managed to be trained to repair machinery.
In the year 2024, it’s hard to fathom how that was at all possible to do, but times were different back then. I will say, I’m fairly certain that my parents were also in a ton of debt when I was growing up. It’s just that they used to give loans to everyone (hence the housing market crash in around 2009 or whenever it was).
I don’t know if it was created by the show, but if it is, by mentioning “Dink” you seem to be a fellow Doug enjoyer.
I don’t think Doug invented it, but probably helped popularize it.
Yeah, I like Doug. Killer Tofu is unironically a fucking bop. But now that I’m older, Doug might have had some kind of social disorder or something lol. But he also has a ton of similarities to JD from Scrubs, another show I really liked.
I still blast it out every now and then. That and Banging on a Trash Can