Grace Stanke, Nuclear Energy, Delaware
Grace Stanke, who has been in the industry for 5 years, is a Nuclear Engineer at Constellation.
Why is clean energy important to you? Clean energy is bigger than just climate change. I work in nuclear because I care about not only zero carbon emissions, but also reliable energy. The energy grid is something every single American uses on a daily basis and it’s going to be an increasingly more important issue because our power demands are going to continue to increase with transitions to EV’s and all sorts of other things being electrified. All of these different technological developments are going to lead to a higher demand on the power grid. That's going to lead to either more carbon emissions if we're continuing the way that we are going with our power grid expansion, or it's going to lead to unreliable energy. It's about building a diverse energy portfolio to help ensure that we're protecting the environment around us and also able to access power when we need it.
What's a memorable clean energy project you’ve worked on? Working in the nuclear industry, I've helped with refueling outages and some core design processes. The bigger picture is helping ensure America is receiving the power it needs from its nuclear power plants. Nuclear currently powers 20% of America, the company that I have worked with on the commercial side — both as a co-op through college and now as a full time employee — they own and operate twelve different nuclear power plants across the country. They're the nation's largest provider of clean energy and it's it's really awesome to be involved in that.
What did you do prior to working in clean energy? Why did you transition to the clean energy industry? I got into this field out of spite actually, I was a 16 year old teenage girl and I thought about doing aerospace or nuclear engineering solely because they both just sounded really cool. I didn't know anything about energy or electricity other than we use it at home. And my dad told me, “Grace, don't go into nuclear. There's no future there.” Naturally, 16 year-old me’s reaction was to go into nuclear. And that that first semester in college I fell in love with nuclear science because I learned that nuclear is more than just energy. It’s the reason my dad's alive; he's a two time cancer survivor. I learned about nuclear energy’s applications in agriculture. I'm from Wisconsin, so agriculture is all around us. On top of that, the clean energy that it can produce was just amazing and opened me up to this whole world of energy and electricity. I started exploring that as a potential career and I fell in love with it because it is a real world problem that needs to be solved and talked about right now in order to find a reasonable solution.
What do you wish more people knew about the clean energy industry? I wish people knew that we need a diverse portfolio. One thing that I run into a lot when I'm talking about nuclear energy is people think renewables are the only way, but it's not just about solar or nuclear. I wish more people realized we need nuclear plus renewables. We need a diverse energy portfolio in order to maintain reliability, accessibility, and a carbon emissions free grid.
Why should congress invest in clean energy jobs? In my opinion, clean energy drives innovation. It's a whole new type of technology that we have yet to explore that has the ability to do so much more than just provide electricity if we support all different types of clean energy and people going into this industry. It's already got the best and the brightest people in this industry, I have no doubt about that. But we need more people involved and more support in general.
