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Information for Employers
The Nuclear Island vision is to create a partnership between employers and Further and Higher Education Institutes to tackle the critical future workforce needs of nuclear new build: the Nuclear Island would be a hands-on new build experience for students in engineering, developing the management and on-site skills valued by industry.
The Nuclear Island aims to become an integral part of a number of UK further and higher education engineering courses, attracting and exposing students from civil and nuclear engineering to the new build sector. The students would manage and construct scaled down sections of a nuclear power plant. They would be assessed in relation to real-life skills such as radiation protection, site licensing, budgetary control and project management.
A number of events have taken place with industry and education providers to date, and we are now seeking industry engagement to support the programme: details from these events can be found here. The Nuclear Island builds upon established good working practice in the civil engineering sector where scaled down models of large builds are performed by various students and supervisors from industry. To date, projects have included the Gherkin Building and the London Olympics Veldrome, where students reconstruct these civil engineering projects over a one week period. More information can be found at: www.constructionarium.co.uk Clive Smith, Cogent Skills Director and Nuclear Industry Lead said, “this initiative will give students from a wide range of disciplines a real feel for the challenges, constraints and behavioural requirements associated with new nuclear build. It will assist in attracting new entrants to the industry and meet the recommendations in Cogent’s ‘Next Generation’ Labour Market Intelligence report".
“My organisation, Westinghouse / Springfields Fuels has about 1300 full time employees on site, with a further 60 Agency Supplied Workers (ASW’s) and Contractors. With the very likely prospect of new nuclear reactor build in the UK, it is absolutely imperative that steps are taken to increase the supply of suitable potential employees in a very wide range of work areas, particularly engineering.”
Neil Farley, Head of Skills Development and Human Performance, Springfields Fuels Ltd “AREVA UK Ltd support Cogent and Imperial College in their bid to the Royal Academy of Engineering to build a nuclear island model as part of the Constructionarium project. It is important that engineering skills are nurtured and developed at all levels in order to feed the needs of the industry.” Jean-Jacques Gautrot, Chairman & CEO, AREVA UK “We would welcome the ‘Nuclear Island’ proposal as one element of this work, providing an opportunity for those at the early stages of their development in the industry to develop experience of a ‘nuclear’ site, through the use of a Constructionarium-style approach.” Alasdair Reisner, Head of Industry Affairs, Civil Engineering Contractors Association 
 
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