Hollie Hartley
As a single mom of two kids I was able to buy my first house alone by working full time as a laborer in a southern plant. I then started traveling to normal refueling outages at nuclear plants across the country (10 different ones to be exact!). I made lots of friends on the road at the nukes - they opened their homes to me when I was traveling, and became my second family.
Eventually, I met a carpenter at a New Hampshire plant and moved my kids across the country to live with him. We’ve been together for two years, bought a house together, had a baby, and got engaged! I left the plant when I was about 32 weeks pregnant and plan on going back for the outage next fall.
I didn’t know much about nuclear power until I started working at the plants. At first I was a little nervous because of all of the security signs leading into the plant and the only thing I knew about nuclear power at the time was from the Simpsons. I didn’t want to end up falling into a vault of radioactive waste (lol)! As for my family and friends, what they thought about nuclear was close to my thoughts about the Simpsons. None of them had any knowledge about it other than what was shown on TV. So some of them did worry about me getting cancer or the plant blowing up, only because of the lack of information.
When I got there and took the classes and talked to my coworkers and supervisors I was quickly at ease and am now fully in support of the clean energy that I help produce.
I’ve always felt supported by everyone that I worked with. I’ve always felt like my training that I received from the plants was adequate and very informative. It explained the process from atoms to fuel to electricity. It explained how to take precautions to be as safe as possible at work. And I learned more about radiation - that most of the time normal people will be exposed to larger doses in day to day life than I would working at the plant.
I’ve always felt safe working in all areas of the nuke. I never felt like I put my unborn baby in danger. Her father and I both worked side by side at the nuke while I was pregnant. My went to meet with the radiation protection technicians and our site’s health physicists. We discussed my rights as a declared pregnant woman and there was a special process to control my access into the RCA (radiological control area). I whole-heartedly believed that no one at the nuke was going to put me or my baby at risk or in danger.
Our nuclear fleet has made it possible to support my family the way I’d like and I wouldn’t have anything that I have now if it weren’t for the nukes. I’m just a normal person. I greatly attribute my current lifestyle to being able to work in nuclear. If it wasn’t for that I would have just ended up working minimum wage jobs and not being able to get ahead. But now I have been able to get training, learn skills and have opportunities to better mine and my family’s life.
My kids have only known me to work at the nukes and they are happy with their lifestyle that I give them so I’d say they support nukes as well. They are 10 & 11 and both want to work with me when they get older. And as their mom I am fully on board with that.
I can honestly say that I am a big supporter of thinking that we need more nuclear power plants and need to get more funding to keep the old ones in running condition. My only complaint now is that they don’t offer daycare at the plant which would enable me to go back to work even sooner!
Maternity photos were taken by a coworker at the beach right outside the nuclear plant.
