Although only at the helm for about the last four years, Regis Repko, site vice president at Duke Power's McGuire Nuclear Station, is quite proud of his company's long-standing reputation as a good neighbor — if you can call a nuclear power plant with two hulking reactors and enough concertina wire to fortify its 700-acre yard a neighbor, that is.

Well, in northern Mecklenburg, it's safe to say you can. And it's also safe to say that safety is a big reason for those rather neighborly relations.

"We really take a lot of pride in being a good neighbor for the 30 years that we've been here," Repko says. Between quoting power generation statistics and pointing out various station landmarks during a recent tour for local media, he also speaks proudly of the station's relationship with the folks who share the area — although not necessarily white picket fence lines — with McGuire.

"We're very fortunate, the amount of support we have in the area," he says.

It's that 30th anniversary of operations that Repko and his staff are commemorating, a stretch that has included only one safety-related event more than 20 years ago involving one of the power plant's steam turbines.

Part of the 30th anniversary celebration included a tour of the station last week for about a dozen or so media types. But it was a tour far from the standard stroll through the EnergyExplorium's interactive exhibits or a peek at the site's massive steam turbines.

This one was a bit different, as it offered a behind-the-curtain swing through the twin control rooms for the station's reactors as well as its technical support center that can be spun up for emergency communications in the event of, well, an event.

It also included a visit to one of the two pools where used fuel assemblies are stored once they've outlived their usefulness in a reactor — an eerily quiet space where the focal point is a vast pool of azure-colored water with a glass-like surface.

But that visual belies the inherent danger of the setting. The alluring blue water gets its color from the Cherenkov radiation emitted by the used fuel rods, and the pool's surface is virtually undisturbed because the station's radiation protection experts and security personnel have raked each visitor over with a figurative fine-toothed comb more than once.

Several times, actually. By the time the group climbed the narrow flight of stairs for a bird's eye view of the pool, it had passed through at least one-half dozen separate screenings and checkpoints. No shady characters or foreign objects get in.

Preparations for entering the used fuel pool area were incredibly stringent. The lanyard worn by visitors that holds an identification badge as well as two radiation dosimeters gets tucked into one's shirt, which gets tucked into one's pants. Visitors are then wrapped in a white lab coat, hardhat, safety goggles and two sets of gloves (latex ones covering a pair of cotton gloves). One reporter, who shall remain nameless, was even politely reminded to spit out her gum. Anything, even a well-chewed piece of Trident, could become an irritant if it fell in the used fuel pool.

The small army of McGuire staff required to shepherd the reporters and photographers safely through the plant last week was indeed picky (for good reason), but remained professional and polite throughout the nearly six-hour evolution. They are just a portion of the nearly 1,200-strong workforce at McGuire, more than one-third of whom come from Mecklenburg and Iredell counties.

With an annual payroll of about $162 million, McGuire is one of the largest employers in the Lake Norman area, says spokesperson Valerie Patterson. The average salary for a McGuire staffer is $72,000, and Patterson says in spite of economic trends, the human resources folks at McGuire remain busy.

"We continue with our hiring plan and have been hiring throughout the year in our operations and security groups," she says. "Our hiring plan is focused on filling positions in groups where resources are needed, as well as preparing us for openings that will occur due to employees retiring over the next several years."

And retire they will, according to statistics from the Nuclear Energy Institute. A recent NEI report says that in 2009, the nuclear industry employed approximately 120,000 people, and that slightly more than one-third of them will be retirement-eligible in the next five years. To maintain the current work force, the report says, the industry will need to hire approximately 25,000 more workers by 2015.

Repko's own comments during the tour echoed the NEI report. He said several of McGuire's staff have been at the plant for its entire 30-year history (the average station-wide is about 20 years of service) and that much of his most experienced employees will soon be aging out of the industry.

A local partner

After 10 years of construction, McGuire's first reactor went operational in December 1981, with the second unit joining it in March 1984. Since beginning its commercial operations, Patterson says McGuire has steadily built a reputation as a business and community partner through its volunteerism, philanthropy and support of the local economy and businesses.

As an example of that support, she says not only does the station shop locally and use services from the area, the more than 3,500 vendors who supported McGuire's two scheduled refueling outages this year stayed in local hotels, dined in the area's restaurants and shopped at nearby stores. In addition, she says that McGuire staffers gave nearly $160,000 to United Way campaigns in the last two years.

And, Patterson adds, McGuire also parties as well as it patronizes. As a member of the Lake Norman, Mooresville-South Iredell and Lincolnton-Lincoln County chambers of commerce, the station rolls out the welcome mat every May for the largest "Business After Hours" networking event in the region.

Partnering with every kind of community group imaginable — from the Carolina Raptor Center to local fire and police departments to the Charlotte Symphony (whose outdoor concert at McGuire earlier this year drew more than 10,000 people) — has become a staple for the station, and as Repko puts it, has gained it an interesting reputation among his nuclear peers.

"Very few people in this industry will ever hear, 'Honey, let's take the kids over to the nuclear station for a concert,'" he says.

McGuire

by the numbers

$9.69 million — property taxes paid in 2010

560 — Boy Scouts who participated in the 2011 Boy Scout Encampment on the McGuire lawn.

193 — fuel assemblies within each reactor

36 — hours of training required for control room personnel every five weeks

10 — amount of radiation exposure in millirems from a chest x-ray

0.0 — amount of radiation exposure in millirems recorded on Citizen reporter's dosimeter at the end of last week's five-hour-plus tour.