World Nuclear Association Director General Agneta Rising said today that the changes needed to transition to a more sustainable future will not happen without the participation of a diverse workforce, and the greater inclusion of women. Speaking to participants in a side event to the International Atomic Energy Agency's 64th General Conference, Rising said the energy sector remains one of the most gender-imbalanced, and that the nuclear sector was no exception.

Digital twins of every unit in France's fleet of nuclear power reactors are to be developed under a four-year project involving partners from academia and industry. These cloned reactors will serve as a training simulator for the new generation of operators and a simulation environment for engineering studies.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is accepting applications for its Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship Programme. The programme, launched in March, aims to encourage young women to pursue a career in nuclear science and technology, nuclear safety and security, or non-proliferation.

Nuclear power programmes can benefit society through the creation of high-quality employment opportunities while providing secure, reliable energy supplies, but the industry must make sure it engages in open and transparent communications with stakeholders, as well as being cost-competitive with all other forms of generation, if those benefits are to be realised. These were the feelings from an international high-level panel of nuclear industry and academic experts at World Nuclear Association's Strategic eForum 2020.

Civil nuclear has historically had a certain image of the type of people most likely to be employed in the sector, in terms of job function, gender and age. That image is rightly changing, writes Zoe Stollard, partner at national law firm Clarke Willmott.

Kazakhstan's JSC National Atomic Company Kazatomprom plans to return staffing levels at its uranium mines to normal by around the end of this month. The number of employees at the mine sites was reduced between April and July in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rosenergoatom, the operator subsidiary of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, is establishing a new experimental and demonstration engineering centre for the decommissioning of RBMK reactors. The new centre will be based at the Leningrad plant site in the Leningrad region of Russia, with a branch at the Beloyarsk plant in the Sverdlovsk region.

In these challenging and increasingly nationalistic times, it is important that leading international organisations seek to overcome institutional barriers and work together to deliver change, Agneta Rising, World Nuclear Association director general, said today. Rising was speaking during an OECD-Nuclear Energy Agency webinar on its newly published Policy Brief, Creating high-value jobs in the post-COVID-19 recovery with nuclear power projects. Publication of the report coincided with World Nuclear Association’s latest technical position paper, Employment in the nuclear and wind electricity generating sectors.

The nuclear energy industry provides more numerous, better-paid and more highly-trained jobs than does the wind power sector, according to a technical position paper published today by World Nuclear Association. It provides around 25% more employment per unit of electricity generated.
 

Nuclear energy projects should be included in post-COVID recovery plans as they provide a large number of jobs that help boost the economy, the OECD-Nuclear Energy Agency says in its newly published Policy Brief, Creating high-value jobs in the post-COVID-19 recovery with nuclear energy projects.

EDF Energy expects 1200 new jobs and 300 apprentices to be created in the next phase of construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset, England. They will become part of the 4000 strong workforce who will fit electrical systems, cables and pipes at the plant.

Ashot Sargsyan, a lead engineer in the quality assurance department at Armenian Nuclear Power Plant, participated in the World Nuclear University Summer Institute of 2016, in Ottawa, Canada, as a World Association of Nuclear Operators’ scholarship winner.