The UK’s largest engineering consultancy, Atkins, has offered to help bridge the nuclear skills gap by opening up its own training academy to key partners in the nuclear industry. This could be a vital additional resource as a report from the nuclear national skills body, Cogent, today underlined the need to train 1000 new nuclear engineers every year until 2025 just to maintain the current energy output from the sector.

The Atkins nuclear training academy has trained more than 550 engineers in specialist skills over the past two years, taking both recent graduates as well as experienced professionals from other disciplines.

Chris Ball, director of nuclear at Atkins, said: “Because of our deep and historical involvement in the nuclear sector we decided to open our own Atkins Training Academy (ATA) in 2005.  It enabled us to extend our recruitment reach, bringing in new skills, while increasing the overall talent pool by training engineers who have not worked in the nuclear sector before.  Nuclear engineers have to have particularly high level expertise because of the safety-critical environment they work in and through a two year structured training course, Atkins engineers gain a deeper understanding of the industry.”

He added: “In the past six months alone, we have trained more than 150 of our professional engineers and we have capacity to grow these numbers.  Atkins is dedicated to Britain’s nuclear future and as one of the leading engineering design consultancies in the field we want to ensure the skills gap is addressed. We have invested in order to play a key role in that.”

The academy courses range from an introduction to the nuclear industry right through to the design of fuel storage facilities, and Atkins is continually looking at new courses to ensure staff receive the most appropriate and up-to-the-minute learning paths for their field.

Atkins is currently delivering engineering services for the clean-up at Sellafield on one of the most challenging legacy facilities on the site.  The team is also a tier one strategic partner to British Energy for the supply of engineering, safety and environmental services to maintain the existing fleet of advanced gas-cooled reactors and its pressurised water reactor.  In addition, in the emerging new build sector, Atkins is providing support to an international vendor, potential operators and Her Majesty’s Government (BERR).