Nuclear skills shortage may damage switch to low carbon economy. |
A skills shortage in the nuclear industry could harm Britain’s transition to a low carbon economy, according to a new report.
Research into the nuclear industry workforce by Cogent, its sector skills council, reveals a renewed demand for skills related to the new build and decommissioning of nuclear plants, if the government is to reach its low-carbon energy targets.
The nuclear industry needs to “urgently” undertake workforce planning to ensure the sector’s sustainability, according to the report, which looks at nuclear operations until 2025. Employers particularly need to tackle the consequences of an ageing workforce as increasing numbers retire and the sector risks being stripped of its most highly trained and experienced workers.
The report says the sector will require a thousand new recruits every year until 2025 if the current level of nuclear power generation, which supplies around 15 per cent of the UK’s electricity, is to be maintained.
But if a lack of trained workers or government backing leads to no new nuclear plants being built, 90 per cent of the 44,000 people that the sector currently employs could eventually lose their jobs, the reports warns.
Jean Llewellyn, chief executive of the National Skills Academy for Nuclear, the body set up to meet the industry’s training requirements, said the new research will “underpin the design and implementation of effective skills interventions to prevent skills shortages and gaps over the coming decades”.
The nuclear engineering company Westinghouse yesterday said it is in talks with the government about taking on a long-term lease at the Springfield nuclear fuel plant in Lancashire. The move would enable Westinghouse to modernise the site, ready for a new generation of nuclear reactors, and safeguard 1,400 jobs.
Today the government announced that 1,500 graduates would be given work placements in low carbon industries as part of its Backing Young Britain campaign. The ‘low carbon future leaders’ scheme is part of a raft of government measures to help younger workers gain paid work experience and jobs during the recession.
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