Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)
Asked about the prospects for moving people into the nuclear sector from other industries, van der Lee said that France and Canada had been discussing the issue. He said they were considering creating “bridging training courses in order, for example, to get people from the car industry, mechanical engineers in the car industry” into nuclear the nuclear industry but “it’s not just a simple walk in the park” and may involve part-time online masters-equivalent courses having to be done around their current jobs.
However, he added that there was a lot of innovation in the sector with new SMR and advanced reactor designs, nuclear fusion developments and also opportunities for AI experts in many areas, with digital twins and machine learning, and that all these factors made it an attractive career choice.
Bilbao y León concluded the session by asking the panelists how success by 2030 would look. Tyabashe said, “we need to be able to see a workforce that can support the at least tripling of nuclear power by 2050. The only way we can do that by 2050 is that by 2030, we have that foundational aspect of having tripled the workforce for construction, because we know that you need many more people to construct these power plants, as well as having … a skills pipeline for developing and training people to operate those plants”.
Van der Lee commented, “one measure of success would be if we can really increase diversity, because it is something really measurable … diversity also in terms of internationality … also in terms of regulation and transparency regulation. I think these are really measurable ways to move forward”.
Darelius said that, for him, success would be when nuclear courses look like “a very natural part of the educational system”. The example he presented was for an option within an electrical engineer’s course which included nuclear science “so that becomes something that is very visible for all engineers”. He added that his friends were always surprised to hear about international collaboration in the nuclear sector. “When I tell them I can pick up the phone and call a nuclear power plant in the U.S. or in France or wherever, because I have a problem, I want help to solve it. And they just raise their eyebrows and wonder why? Why are they giving away all the know-how? Because that is how we do it. And they are people working for Volvo or for some other great Swedish companies, and they can’t, they won’t be able to call Tesla if they have a problem with the engines or whatever. But in the nuclear industry we do it like this. And the ability to have this international exchange is attractive for young people, especially when going to university. And we should use this more.”
Bilbao y León concluded the session by saying that there was an enormous opportunity and the key, as Darelius had said, was collaboration. “I’m an international collaborator … because not one country, not one company, not one continent, not one technology is going to achieve this goal. We really, really, really need to work together.”