Forty-five years fostering leadership in the safe and reliable operation of nuclear power throughout the world.
Senior corporate team leader with the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations and the World Association of Nuclear Operators since 1995, following fifteen years in utility operations with Carolina Power & Light, later Progress Energy and Duke Energy.
Three disciplines drawn from forty-five years inside the nuclear industry.
Fostering the leadership behaviours behind safe and reliable operation, the work INPO and WANO exist to do, carried out across the global fleet.
Fostering the leadership behaviours behind safe and reliable operation, the work INPO and WANO exist to do, carried out across the global fleet.
Certified in event investigation by the National Academy for Nuclear Training since 2002. Finding the real cause, not the convenient one.
Certified in event investigation by the National Academy for Nuclear Training since 2002. Finding the real cause, not the convenient one.
An INPO-certified instructor and facilitator since 2003, whose passion for teaching has shaped leaders throughout the industry.
An INPO-certified instructor and facilitator since 2003, whose passion for teaching has shaped leaders throughout the industry.
Nuclear power is safest where leadership is strongest.
A single industry, entered in 1980 and never left.
Years in nuclear power
Years with INPO & WANO
Years in utility operations
Degrees earned
From operating plants to raising the standard by which plants are judged.
Three decades of successive roles across INPO and WANO, culminating in senior corporate team leadership. The remit spans plant evaluation, event investigation, instruction and the long work of developing leaders inside the nuclear industry.
A succession of positions that built the foundation of his nuclear expertise, marked throughout by a dedication to excellence and innovation, and by contributions that fed directly into the company’s success.
Retirement is not the plan so much as a change of seat. He intends to join Nuclear Safety Review Boards, putting forty-five years of accumulated judgement to work where independent oversight matters most.
Rusty Shoemaker has spent his entire working life in nuclear power, and almost all of it asking the same question: what does it take for people to operate a plant safely, day after day, for decades?
The answer he has built a career around is not equipment. It is leadership. Since 1995 he has held a series of roles at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations and the World Association of Nuclear Operators, most recently as a senior corporate team leader, work that puts him inside stations and boardrooms across the industry, evaluating performance, investigating events and developing the people who will run the next generation of plants.
Before that came fifteen years of hands-on utility experience with Carolina Power & Light, from 1980 to 1995. Those years laid the operational foundation everything since has been built on, and they are why his guidance carries weight with the operators who receive it.
From the physics of the core to the leadership of the people who operate it.
Recognition from a Commonwealth, an industry and a profession.
The Commonwealth of Kentucky’s highest honour, conferred by the Governor of Kentucky.
Repeated recognition from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations across three decades of service.
Selected for inclusion in recognition of forty-five years of dedicated service in the engineering industry.
Civic commitment carried with the same consistency as the professional record. He serves as a deacon and Sunday school teacher at Burnt Hickory Baptist Church, and contributes to community welfare through the Atlanta Food Bank and the Salvation Army, the same instinct for teaching that shapes his professional work, applied at home.
Time with family comes first. Beyond it: photography, teaching the Bible, biking, and the steady satisfaction of yard work and gardening, pursuits that share a certain patience with a forty-five year career.
For enquiries regarding Nuclear Safety Review Board service, speaking, instruction, leadership development or professional consultation.
Acworth, Georgia, United States
Senior Corporate Team Leader, INPO & WANO
Safety review boards · Speaking
Leadership development