by Peter Wilson, Executive Industry Consultant, Hexagon Asset Lifecycle Intelligence Division
The nuclear industry has an age problem. According to the Global Energy Talent Index 2022, one in four of its employees is over 55, and one in ten is over 65. In the next decade, these employees will retire in large numbers, which poses a significant risk of loss of knowledge and skills.
The age of the industry’s workforce is a direct reflection of half a century of changing public policies around the world. In the mid-1980s, several countries paused their programmes and recruitment in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. Today, this results in a marked deficit of GenX workers, with only 9% of the workforce between the ages of 45 and 55.
Nuclear firms have found a temporary solution to mitigate the potential loss of senior knowledge: bringing back retired employees. In France, the specialised firm Experconnect claims to have placed 3,000 senior employees in the industry. Other countries, such as the United States, are tapping into retired military personnel to fill the gaps.
Maintenance Jobs at the Forefront of a Generational Shift
However, as multiple countries plan ambitious expansions of their nuclear industries, recalling retirees will not solve the sector’s workforce problems.
In the UK, it is estimated that the sector needs to double its workforce and fill 80,000 jobs to meet plans to quadruple the country’s nuclear power by 2050, in what has been dubbed the “biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years”.
One area where the current generational shift is particularly feared is maintenance. Maintaining nuclear reactors requires various specialised profiles—welders, boilermakers, pipefitters, and engineers—for which the talent pool is limited and young candidates are scarce.
In the UK, for example, 40% of welders are over 50, at a time when the number of welders in the workforce needs to grow by 50% in a decade to meet the energy sector’s needs. At its Hinkley Point site in Britain, EDF has launched a programme to train 500 welders per year.
Industry players are also using technology to maximise the use of these specialists’ time and thus reduce the impact of skills shortages. Better use of plant data and platforms such as digital twins or enterprise asset management is being used to avoid over- and under-maintenance, plan interventions, automate administrative tasks, and provide access to the needed documentation.
Preserving Senior Staff Knowledge
Another vital issue for facility safety is preserving the implicit or tacit knowledge gained by senior employees.
To this end, nuclear firms have implemented various mentoring initiatives where seasoned employees share their experiences with new recruits. Nuclear fuel cycle company Orano, for example, has launched a programme designed specifically to attract and mentor STEM professionals who return to work after a career break.
Another key area of interest is the deployment of procedure management software that can capture how procedures are actually performed in the field, convert them to step-by-step checklists, and ensure that these new procedures are correctly followed.
Today, capturing these plant operation procedures, translating them to a standardised language and organising them effectively is a promising use case for artificial intelligence. Since the number of procedures can run in the thousands, making sure that they are easy to find and understand is essential, especially for new recruits.
Changing the narrative to attract younger workers
Attracting these new recruits also involves reversing public perceptions after two decades that have seen the role of nuclear energy decline in Western Europe and some countries, such as Germany, shutting down their plants.
If the 28 governments of pro-nuclear nations keep their COP28 commitments—tripling nuclear energy capacity worldwide—operators and industry players worldwide could increasingly compete for a limited pool of qualified candidates.
According to McKinsey, a consultancy, the global nuclear workforce will need to grow to 5 million to achieve this goal, which would require at least doubling the existing workforce in several geographies at the same time.
Widening the pool of qualified candidates by making the industry more attractive is therefore critical. To that end, it is important to showcase the industry’s future and its technological prowess to attract. Projects like fourth-generation reactors or small modular reactors (SMRs) will be key to that effort—and so will showcasing the cutting-edge technologies used in existing plants and the career paths the nuclear sector can offer.
