Nuclear industry will need new blood

London -  Establishing and running the next generation of nuclear power plants in the UK will place a new set of demands on the industry's skills base,  according to a new report by Cogent Sector Skills Council - the national skills body for the Nuclear Industry.

Replacing the current fleet of nuclear power stations represents a multibillion pound private sector investment programme, but one which is dependent on a highly skilled workforce, said the report, called Power People: The Civil Nuclear Workforce 2009 to 2025

Today the civil nuclear industry provides employment for 44000 people in the core industry and the direct supply chain. The Cogent report maps this workforce by region, nation, skill level, age, sector and job role and highlights some critical issues:

- The industry will require a thousand new recruits every year if the current level of nuclear power generation is to be maintained to 2025 and beyond

-The nuclear workforce is older than the general workforce and is suffering from an accelerating retirement rate. This will strip the industry of the most highly trained and experienced personnel

-2015 is a critical year when decommissioning of the current fleet overlaps with both the need to begin training the operators for new power plants and an accelerated retirement rate

- In the absence of new build, the UK faces a reduction of 90% in the workforce employed in nuclear electricity generation

- The renaissance of nuclear power globally provides a reactivated UK supply chain with international opportunities.

Prior to this research the nuclear industry workforce had been estimated from limited data, according to Dr Brian Murphy, director of research at Cogent SSC. This, he said, has severely restricted future skills projections in the nuclear industry.

"This has been corrected with a full industry return to us of manpower data," said Murphy. "We have quantified the skills drivers including an ageing workforce, a shift in skills to decommissioning and a new demand for skills for new nuclear stations. ”

Mark Higson, chief executive, Office for Nuclear Development says in the report: “Britain’s strong heritage in nuclear power, and its clear role in our low carbon future, means that Cogent and the National Skills Academy for Nuclear have a critical role to play in the skills agenda. As the transition from operating, to decommissioning, through to new build takes place, an expanded supply of matching skills will be needed.”

The Cogent report will be used by its partner the National Skills Academy for Nuclear, training providers, trades unions and the nuclear industry to help ensure that enough people, with the right skills, are available to take up the posts that the new build renaissance offers. The study is the first in a series of outputs from a major Cogent skills research programme underway this year.

The report Power People: The Civil Nuclear Workforce 2009 to 2025 is available (under embargo) from – www.cogent-ssc.com/research/Publications/NuclearReportPowerPeople.pdf <http://www.cogent-ssc.com/research/Publications/NuclearReportPowerPeople.pdf>