I don't know how things work in the civilian world, but theoretically you wouldn't need very bright people to operate Naval plants at all.
The nuclear Navy has a procedure that specifically details what to do for almost every feesible circumstance... "Turn this" "Turn this, aye" "Turning this" "Turning this, aye" "This is turned" "This is turned aye." If it doesn't specifically detail the procedure, then you need to ask someone with 10-20+ years of experience (eg, the edmc, eng, or the captain) what to do. It really doesn't take a genious to read a procedure, do it, repeat. Most of the incident reports arise from people failing to live up to this strict adherence, like when a qualified PVO operator suddeny decides radcon isn't important when removing a primary valve cap.
The smarts come in when it comes to having a theoretical understanding of the entire plant and how it operates, which is a standard that was implemented by Rickover with the founding of nuclear power. It's that theoretical knowledge that can help get a job in civvy land after the Navy or get an advanced degree, but knowing how to derive the reactor kinetics equations really doesn't help people operate the plant.
So I'm curious how you think that raising the standards of theoretical knowledge in the training pipeline is going to do to prevent operators from choosing to disregard procedures? I mean, you're talking about taking the brightest of the bright people, putting them through rigorous training, and then telling them that after all that they can't do a darn thing unless they read it out of a book first while being supervised by at least two people, no matter how many times they've done it before.
There's also the fact that the Navy doesn't take its pool of enlisted Sailors from college graduates. It has to operate on the lowest common denominator, which is a 17 year old high school graduate who probably has very little work experience and comes from a public education system that is way behind the power curve compared to our industrialized counterparts. If you wish to raise the standards that high, you're talking about attracting college graduates...and while the bonuses are nice, a college graduate with a technical degree can get out of college and earn an average salary of over $55k a year as a starting salary...without working 80 hour weeks. I'm sure the Navy would love to have the standard this high for all its Sailors, but with the nuclear Navy being under-manned currently, who's going to operate the plants?