Fighting a nuclear brain drain and finding ways to recruit tomorrow's nuclear workforce were central to discussions at an IAEA Scientific Form session, held during this week´s General Conference in Vienna.
E.O. Adamov, Russian Federation
Zondo, South Africa
Blue, United Kingdom
One tool – to make sure students know that nuclear engineering graduates are obtaining high starting salaries - was effectively used by Dr. Alan Waltar, who headed Texas A&M University's nuclear engineering program. The University boasts one of the largest undergraduate student enrollments in the USA. (Read the case study)
The nuclear industry has long been losing the best and brightest students to popular fields such as computer science, bioscience and business. There is a huge need for nuclear professionals. The US alone needs 90,000 new nuclear workers in the next 10 years – specifically 2,400 new nuclear engineers and 1,300 new health physicists. This is further exasperated by the lack of meaningful efforts to capture the knowledge of "first nuclear era" professionals in a form that can be effectively transferred to the upcoming generation, Dr. Waltar said in his keynote address to the Forum.
The need to understand and be in touch with today´s youth – their pragmatism and perceptions of the nuclear industry as stagnant, soured by negative publicity associated with the Chernobyl accident, was highlighted. As one delegate put it, young people no longer see the nuclear industry as "glamorous" but "old, ugly, useless and dangerous". Restoring confidence in nuclear science as a bright, prosperous career path is a prime communication challenge.
Keynote addresses were also delivered by the head of Slovak´s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, Dr. M. Ziakova, Professor E. Adamov, Adviser to the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, and Dr. R. Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Indian Government. The session was moderated by Mr. D.F. Torgerson of Canada. Keynote presentations were followed by a panel discussion that also included M. Cumo of Italy, R. Cirimello of Argentina, and N. Pelzer of Germany.
Loss of valuable nuclear knowledge
The session emphasized that methods must be found to better capture the enormous body of nuclear experience. Today's nuclear workforce needs to document knowledge and then mentor the new nuclear scientists to build upon it, rather than having to re-create it. The IAEA has a role in pooling this global knowledge. A key priority to come out of the Agency's June meeting on Managing Nuclear Knowledge was the integration of existing nuclear data and information bases in the form of an easily accessible Nuclear Knowledge Portal.
Troubling Trends
Loss of nuclear expertise and deteriorating experimental facilities represents a "direct threat" to safety, Ms. Ziakova told the Forum. The workforce and nuclear facilities had aged hand in hand. In her country "the decrease in the number of job positions has led to declining university enrolments, closing of university departments and research reactors," she said.
Today's students no longer have the same access to field experiments and state-of-the-art software. Prof. Adamov said that the number of research reactors, experimental facilities and test rigs had been greatly reduced. "Vigorous computerization in the last decade is not a cure-all to make up for the entire loss of the resources that were originally available for nuclear technology progress," he said.
Attracting qualified people is essential for sustainable development – especially for developing countries. Dr. Chidambaram told the seminar that fundamental nuclear research has been receiving less support from governments in recent years. Government sponsored research is vital for sustainable development, because the private sector generally tends to shy away from R&D with long-range pay-offs, he said.
Battling the brain drain
One proposal to feed the nuclear pipeline with bright students was to organize interested nations according to clusters that had similar economic infrastructures and public attitudes towards nuclear power. It could allow joint formations of initiatives that might help solve the "pipeline problem" appropriate to their setting.
The outlook for the nuclear workforce may be brightening in some countries. Both the Russian and United States keynote speakers noted a "nuclear renaissance" in the past two years. The resurgence in the US was prompted in part by the Government's commitment to having a new nuclear plant operating in the USA before the end of the decade. It will be the first to be built in the US since the late 1970s. Mr. Chidambaram said India was not facing such problems, thanks to growth in its nuclear industry. "For every 50 applicants that apply for nuclear engineering in India, we choose only one."