Rolls-Royce, which boasts the largest nuclear skills base in the UK, expects the global civil nuclear market to grow to £50 billion annually by 2025, with more than 70 per cent of this being ploughed into the building and support of new nuclear facilities. It is estimated that the nuclear programme in the UK alone will sustain 10 -15,000 jobs over 25 years, nearly half of these from the engineering profession.
For those of us who remember watching flickering television images of the Queen pressing the start button on the world’s first commercial scale nuclear reactor at Calder Hall in 1956, there is more than a hint of deja vu about these predictions. Nowadays, of course, it’s not a brave new world that is driving the nuclear bandwagon, but a pressing need to address contemporary issues like global warming, the demonising of fossil fuel burning and concerns about our future energy security.
Last week, the government announced further plans in its bid to revive the UK’s civil nuclear engineering sector, following last month’s identification of eleven potential sites around the UK for the proposed renaissance of nuclear power infrastructure. The announcement included plans for a concentration of facilities in Yorkshire and the North West, and the siting of the new Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in South Yorkshire alongside the existing Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.
The message is clear: research will be vital to the wellbeing of this industry, and we will need to ramp up the nuclear skills base, if we are to succeed and meet the government’s target dates.
The Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) has been at pains to allay fears over our capability to deliver a viable reactor design within the tight schedule posed by government, and to assure critics that lucrative contracts will not haemorrhage abroad because we lack the necessary expertise at home.
NIA chief executive, Keith Parker says the industry is confident that it will have the first new stations operating in the UK by the end of 2017. He says that all the reactor designs built in the UK would have been previously developed elsewhere, meaning that ‘first-of-a-kind’ delays would be avoided. "This will be a privately funded and privately delivered new build programme,” he says. “The supply-chain is gearing up and the utilities are ready to invest”.
That may be so, but there are obstacles. Public perceptions of nuclear power generation remain stubbornly negative, and perceptions of the engineering profession – especially among young people - also remain largely negative despite huge efforts to counter what, on the face of it, appears to be a peculiarly British malaise.
Just two days preceding the statement on new nuclear research facilities, the body responsible for promoting the importance of engineering to our society – Engineering UK – made known the findings of its most recent annual survey. The key finding appears to throw a spanner into the works as far as the government’s nuclear ambitions are concerned. According to the report, more than half a million new engineers and manufacturing workers will be needed by 2017 (coincidentally the target date for the first new nuclear power plant to come on stream) just to ensure economic recovery.
The report on the state of UK engineering also reveals major obstacles to achieving this number. These include a rapidly diminishing talent pool (16% fewer school-leavers overall by 2019), a 39% fall in Further Education lecturers in engineering and manufacturing, and a 17% drop in the number of Higher Education students taking on production and manufacturing engineering related degree courses.
At the moment, the UK is the world’s sixth largest manufacturing nation. This activity generated £150bn for the UK economy in 2008. It accounted for 55% of all exports, 75% of industrial research and development, and employed three million people. Our engineering research base appears to be thriving and between 59 and 71% of engineering oriented research was classed as being internationally excellent. But that’s now; what of the future?
The Engineers and Engineering Brand Monitor (EEBM), which is run by Engineering UK, has shown a positive shift in wider public perceptions of engineering over the past year. Some 85% of respondents to the most recent survey said they would recommend a career in engineering to their children, friends or family, compared with only 66% in the initial pilot survey undertaken in 2008. Moreover, a higher proportion of the general public now views engineering as a well-respected profession (78%) that makes a good contribution to society (86%) and which will have a positive impact on our future (91%). Younger members of our society, however, have a different view.
The age range 7-16 year olds have the least positive opinion of engineering and this is the very group that will (hopefully) deliver the engineering expertise that we will need to sustain our society. Engineering UK says that to align this group more closely with the general population, we need to link the popular school subjects such as art and design more closely with engineering. Crucially, it says, the government – with the support of the engineering community – must ensure that there is a core underpinning resource of good quality careers information about opportunities in engineering and technology for young people as well as those who influence and advise them.
The body of engineering talent in this country is ageing rapidly, and there are clear limits to hauling members of the profession out of their retirement to meet short-term needs. The statistics are not all gloomy, as we have seen, but sooner or later we must act very positively to regenerate the profession, otherwise we risk certain economic decline.
Les Hunt
Editor
PS - John Houston responded to my comment this morning following the broadcast of our email newsletter. I reproduce his response in full:
I cannot think of a better word to describe the state of UK engineering than the one you chose in your recent DPA leader, for a malaise is exactly what we have.
I refer also to your leader in your sister publication PSB in which you highlighted the National Apprenticeship Service’s claim that 36,000 young people started engineering training last year. In your DPA leader you correctly stated that the base of skilled engineers in the UK is ageing and also that half a million additional engineers will be required to satisfy the build programme for the civil nuclear programme. If the target for the first new nuclear power plant is to be met by 2017, I cannot see how we will be able to meet that demand for expertise domestically.
A large proportion of those who started engineering apprenticeships last year will drop out, be unable to find employment at the end of their training, or will suffer the fate of their employers liquidating. I cannot predict the likely fall out, but if we are generous and assume it’s one third, this will leave us about 300,000 engineers short of the mark by 2017. Even if all those who start engineering training remain in the industry, we will have 200,000 too few. Assume also that a large number of today’s engineers will have retired or left the industry by 2017 and the gap could be closer to a million!
We have had 53 years to develop our nuclear know how since our first power station opened at Calder. Now we have just seven years to catch up in time to meet the latest deadlines for new stations.
Many of us, yourself included Les, have blathered on for decades about the demise of engineering and technical talent in the UK. It is a laudable fact that in many fields of engineering and technological research we remain leaders. However, it’s the nuts and bolts, greasy, grubby end of engineering where so much talent has emerged over the years. Opportunities to get one’s hands dirty in general electromechanical engineering are few and far between in Great Britain Limited.
I wrote some time back that I saw it as an inevitability that the UK would have to import civil nuclear engineering talent from overseas – most notably in all likelihood France where there is both the strong EdF connection, but also a depth of nuclear engineering experience. If you are building a nuclear power station and need a very large number of skilled, experienced engineers, where would you look?
Of course the Government, whatever its colour, is bound to invest in and incentivise engineering across all its walks and disciplines isn’t it? No, I don’t think so either.
We have witnessed a decline in manufacturing as a percentage of our gross domestic output pretty much every year since the end of the second world war, why break the habit of a lifetime.
I would love to be optimistic about UK engineering, I really would. I fear though that without an unprecedented change of will at the top, our malaise will remain depressing.
We also received this response from Rod Dalitz:
Rarely have a seen a piece which combines so many negative aspects of Britain.
First, "... flickering television images of the Queen pressing the start button on the world’s first commercial scale nuclear reactor at Calder Hall in 1956 ..." and then we lost the way, the foresight, the technology. "... all the reactor designs built in the UK would have been previously developed elsewhere ..." spun into being a Good Thing.
Second, "Public perceptions of nuclear power generation remain stubbornly negative ..." not least the SNP hiding its head in the sand.
Third, "... perceptions of the engineering profession – especially among young people - also remain largely negative ..." The IET and others try to show engineering as well-paid, but I have never been convinced.
Fourth, "... a 39% fall in Further Education lecturers in engineering and manufacturing, and a 17% drop in the number of Higher Education students taking on production and manufacturing engineering related degree courses."
So, to summarise, we used to be excellent at basic research, failed miserably to develop that into commercial success, and continue by turning our backs on technology and appear poised to fade completely.