TravelingNuker.com helps plant workers fuse a consistent schedule

A startup that’s found a temporary home in Ben Barreth’s Hacker House wants to help mobile union tradesmen find temporary “outage” work at the nation’s 63 nuclear power plants using its new database. Occassionally nuclear plants shut down––often during spring and fall when energy demand is lowest––for routine maintenance TravelingNuker.com provides upcoming maintenance …

Two of company’s co-founders, Timothy Haskins (left) and David Clark, hang out in Ben Barreth’s Hacker House.

A startup that’s found a temporary home in Ben Barreth’s Hacker House wants to help mobile union tradesmen find temporary “outage” work at the nation’s 63 nuclear power plants using its new database.

Occasionally nuclear plants shut down––often during spring and fall when energy demand is lowest––for routine maintenance, replacements and to refuel reactors. Kansas City-based TravelingNuker.com provides upcoming maintenance and upgrade projects for temporary workers to seek out and plan for the coming months, as well as all of the hard-to-find contact information needed to set up the work.

The company’s president Christopher Baran says an estimated 250,000 individuals seek out this type of work in the $70 billion nuclear power industry, which accounts for 19 percent of all U.S. electricity production. The site, which launched last week, helps workers schedule jobs and plant-to-plant travel by giving them a big-picture view of varying industry activity, according to a press release.

“In the past, these workers would have had to rely on personal contacts and phone calls to local union halls to gather information and then try to coordinate travel from one plant to another to meet the utilities’ needs and to maintain consistent employment during the peak spring and fall outage seasons,” Baran (right) said. “A single nuclear plant may need up to 3,500 temporary workers at a time for projects that may last only a week to a month, and the burden is on these specialists to track down, apply for and work on these projects and then move on to the next one.”

Users also can sort information by project start and end dates; plant name and location; union local contact information and more. There are several options when it comes to pay models for using the site. While TravelingNuker.com offers a free version, $10 and $20 monthly plans also are available and provide more information. 

Baran is a union carpenter out of New York who, along with his co-founders, David Clark and Timothy Haskins, moved to the Kansas City Startup Village in May for the typical three-month stay in the Hacker House.

 

Credits: Photos from Facebook.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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