Found at: http://www.cogentskills.com/media/76258/national-nuclear-skills-strategic-plan.pdf
This document, issued this month (December 2016), shows that a large number of skilled people will be needed if the diverse programme of build (three different designs of LWR, site decommissioning and the naval programme) is to go ahead as planned. It shows a predicted demand of 9000 new skilled workers a year against an expected performance of less than half that.
The document describes policies, risks, actions and benefits of a national plan to manage this situation and ensure that there is a supply of trained people to match the demand.
I’m disappointed not to see “steadily increasing the British contribution to the nuclear projects” included as an aspiration, policy and outcome. If we expect to be building, operating and decommissioning nuclear facilities for the next generation and exporting the skills we should be trying to increase our percentage of the work, particularly the highly skilled work.
It is also not clear the extent to which skills will be defined. I think that it would be useful to have recognised broad and generic skills for people planning to enter the industry but leave flexibility for the final on-the-job training to match them to actual roles. Too much detail and you’ll have trainees taking time and resources to gain a series of skills they will not use at work – it becomes a tick-box exercise moderated by people with a vested interest in utilising their training resources rather than by employers with a job to do.