UCOR Internships 2027: Programs, Pay and How to Apply

UCOR runs a 12-week onsite summer internship at its Oak Ridge, Tennessee site, hiring students into engineering, data analytics, nuclear safety, environmental science and business tracks. It's not a household name, but it's one of the more unusual internships a student can land: real work on an active Department of Energy cleanup site, not a simulation of one.

Most students have never heard of UCOR because it isn't a consumer brand. It's the prime contractor the DOE hired to clean up decades of Cold War-era nuclear infrastructure at Oak Ridge, and that cleanup work is where interns actually spend their summer.

What UCOR actually does

UCOR is the Department of Energy's environmental cleanup and management contractor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Its roughly 2,200-person workforce demolishes and remediates aging facilities across the Oak Ridge National Laboratory campus, the Y-12 National Security Complex and the former East Tennessee Technology Park, tearing down deteriorated Manhattan Project and Cold War-era buildings that pose environmental and safety risks to the surrounding community. It's contract work, not research, which shapes what interns end up doing day to day.

Internship tracks and what interns work on

UCOR says its intern class has grown more than 40% since 2022, with over 40 students from 10 schools completing internships in 2025. Each intern is paired with a mentor in their department, and UCOR reports that nearly half of past interns have gone on to work at the company, some finishing their internship with a job offer already in hand.

Timeline: when to apply

UCOR begins recruiting interns each fall for the following summer, with postings going up on its employment page as they open. The program itself runs 12 weeks, typically late May through early August, and requires interns to be onsite in Oak Ridge for the full term, so this isn't a remote-friendly option. Only applications submitted through UCOR's own web portal are considered, so a resume emailed directly to a recruiter won't count.

Pay and what to expect

UCOR hasn't published a standard intern pay rate, and the live postings on ApplyBolt's board right now are full-time roles rather than internships, so there's no current listing to check for a number. Government-contractor internships in engineering and environmental fields commonly pay hourly, with the exact rate depending on role, degree level and site. Ask about pay directly once an internship posting opens rather than assuming a figure.

How to apply

Watch UCOR's employment page starting in the fall for the next summer's internship postings, and apply as soon as a role in your field goes up rather than waiting for a deadline. UCOR also partners with the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Roane State Community College and Pellissippi State on apprenticeship-readiness and workforce programs, which can be a useful entry point if you're local to the area.

Because the internship is onsite for the full 12 weeks, plan around housing and transportation to Oak Ridge before you apply, especially if your school is out of state. A resume that leads with relevant coursework, lab work or field experience will do more for you here than a generic objective statement, since the review is handled by people in the department you'd actually join, not a centralized recruiting team screening thousands of resumes at once. If your major doesn't map cleanly onto one of UCOR's listed tracks, applying to the closest fit and explaining the connection in your cover letter is a reasonable approach; the program pairs interns with mentors in specific departments, so a clear sense of what you want to work on helps that matching process.

For how a government-contractor internship compares to a traditional corporate one, see our General Dynamics internship guide, another defense-adjacent employer with its own clearance and eligibility questions. For the broader 2027 picture, start with our summer 2027 internships guide, or browse 2027 hardware engineering internships if you're weighing UCOR against other technical tracks.