Examination of Witnesses (Questions 66
- 79)
MONDAY 7 JULY 2008
CLIVE SMITH,
OBE, ROBERT SKELTON
AND MICHAEL
GRAVE
Q66 Chairman: May I welcome our second
panel this afternoon, Clive Smith OBE, the Skills Development
Director Nuclear of Cogent, also representing the National Skills
Academy for Nuclear, Robert Skelton, the Vice President of the
Institution of Nuclear Engineers, and Michael Grave, the Vice
President of the British Nuclear Energy Society. Welcome to you
all and thank you very much for coming into the earlier session.
May I start with you, Clive, please. There are reported United
Kingdom skill shortages in nuclear engineering. Are they simply
a reflection of this general shortage of engineering skills, or
are they very much specifically to nuclear because we just have
not done nuclear for a long time with serious intent?
Clive Smith: There are some very
specific hot spots: reactor physicists, for example, have risen
on the Immigration Border Agency shortage category to allow immigration
in that area; there are reported shortages in the Health and Safety
Executive with nuclear inspectors—perhaps not surprisingly,
as you need very experienced chaps, so they would be very much
at the latter end of the age spectrum—and some other very
particular areas. It is a general shortage and I think it goes
back to what you were discussing in the last session, that there
is a general shortage of engineers and scientists. Indeed, what
employers generally tell us is that what they want is good engineers
and scientists, which we can then "nuclearise" so that
they can work in the context of nuclear. Many of the skills across
nuclear, or oil and gas, or any other industry, are transferable
engineering and science skills.
Q67 Chairman: Do you share that,
Michael?
Michael Grave: I certainly do.
Not with a BNES hat on, my company works in all the major industries
such as oil and gas, conventional power, nuclear, and we are basically
looking for graduate chemical engineers, mechanical engineers
and project managers, which is another area that is particularly
difficult to get hold of. These graduate trainees, when they come
into the company, could end up in any industry at the end of the
day and I strongly support what Clive said that it is important
to get people with the right sort of engineering good general
background qualifications at the beginning and then we can give
them career development training into other areas.
Q68 Chairman: Robert, do you share
that view?
Robert Skelton: Yes, I think that
is correct. One of the problems that the nuclear industry has
got is that it was the industry to go into in the 1950s
and 1960; it was the growth industry, so of course the age profile
is significantly higher than perhaps most others. I know from
the Institution of Nuclear Engineers, our age profile is significantly
weighted towards the older age group, although in fact it quite
surprised me to see that applies to professional engineers in
general, it is not just nuclear engineers.
Q69 Chairman: Can I raise this issue
with you, when I was a young chap and the first wave of nuclear
power stations were being built and nuclear engineering was very
lively in our universities and in colleges at technician level,
it was all basically owned by the Government. It was under one
roof and since then it has been fragmented significantly to a
point at which it is very much now all within the private sector,
within different small pieces. If you take, for instance, the
decision about Westinghouse being sold off, is not the fragmentation
of the industry causing the skills problems as well?
Robert Skelton: It makes the industry
less attractive. We are beginning to see the corner turned on
this one, we are seeing organisations like the NDA setting up
graduate training programmes. Certainly a lot of graduates, I
am also from the University of Cambridge and the chemical engineering
departments, and the graduates like to go into companies where
they can see good training and a good future. To train people
in general engineering with perhaps specialities in nuclear engineering
is really the way to go, because I think it is more attractive
to both the companies and the students. I, personally, think fragmentation
is a very big problem. When I joined the industry, it was either
the Atomic Energy Authority, BNFL or CEGB and that was basically
it.
Q70 Graham Stringer: Has not the
fragmentation and privatisation meant that there are higher salaries
at the top end for engineers?
Robert Skelton: At the top end,
yes, but I am not certain just how far down that applies. I do
not honestly know. People like to see a training programme, someone
who can give them an integrated training programme and that is
why our students in chemical engineering would far rather go into
companies like the oil companies, Proctor & Gamble, the big
companies like that are much more attractive to them generally
than the smaller companies.
Q71 Chairman: But, Clive, not so
long ago, the BNFL would have offered exactly the sorts of career
path and opportunities that Robert is talking about and as far
as training, it had a reputation that was very high indeed in
terms of training and progression. Do you think that the National
Nuclear Laboratory is going to fill that gap?
Clive Smith: It might, in part.
We were talking about the fragmentation being part of the picture.
The other part of the picture was the image of the industry; it
was very much a nuclear industry in decline. Everything was working
towards shut-down, towards decommissioning and, whilst there are
some pretty exciting challenges in decommissioning, the overall
perception is knocking things down. For a young graduate, newly-qualified
technician or craftsman, knocking something down does not seem
quite as bright and exciting as building something new and operating
a new plant and getting to grips with running a new plant. The
image of the industry as well was something that was not attractive
for this limited field of engineers and scientists to come in.
The formation of the National Nuclear Laboratory, the potential
for new build and all of these initiatives—I think you heard
at the last session, that student numbers are increasing, it is
pretty crude and rough data, but the number of students on the
Birmingham MSc is the most this year that they have ever had;
there are universities opening up nuclear undergraduate courses.
So it is becoming more exciting and more people are now starting
to come in, and starting up the NNL will assist in that perception.
Q72 Chairman: Michael, just briefly,
is the NNL a good idea?
Michael Grave: Yes, it is a good
idea. I am doing some work with the National Nuclear Laboratory[2]
at the moment, in terms of the European Framework programmes that
you mentioned, in the field of decommissioning. I rather agree
with one of the previous speakers at the previous session who
was concerned about whether they will get involved in fundamental
forward thinking research or not. The bit I deal with at the moment
is very much associated with decommissioning.
Q73 Dr Blackman-Woods: Given that
the shortage in nuclear engineering skills is an international
problem, do you think the United Kingdom will be able to attract
people with the necessary skills, even if we load points into
our points system to attract nuclear engineers here? Is that really
going to happen?
Robert Skelton: So much depends
on career prospects and the end of the stop-go policy, which is
another thing that has put people off. We have had this stop-go
policy for so long. The last major project I was involved in was
Sizewell B. It was going to be one of six reactors and everybody
was extremely enthusiastic; we were going to have a new design
and were going to build six of them for once. We were then going
to build four of them but only one was actually built. We have
got to show some continuity to attract anybody, both from overseas
or from the United Kingdom.
Clive Smith: I want to back up
what Robert just said. All the messages coming out are for a bright,
attractive and vibrant industry, and that should assist in that
attraction.
Michael Grave: You must not forget
about the excitement of the part of the industry; the thing that
excites companies; the level that my company works from is the
possibility of making a profit. You put your business plan together
and then you can recruit the people. The energy industry in general
at the moment is so buoyant, it is quite easy to recruit new people
into the industry because there is a big future seen there. You
have got two sorts of problems: not only is there a world situation
about the nuclear industry, but there is a big world resurgence
in energy in general at the moment and there are other energy
industries competing with the nuclear industry for resources as
well. I have just been to the German Nuclear Society annual conference
in Hamburg a few weeks ago, and almost the identical stories were
being told over there that we have got here. It is a pretty worldwide
problem, as you say.
Q74 Dr Blackman-Woods: Ideally, putting
the current shortages aside and looking at what we would really
like, what would the skills landscape look like in order to ensure
that we can move forward in the United Kingdom to new build intelligently?
What would we need that we have not got, or what would you like
to see?
Clive Smith: A much larger pool
of engineers and scientists in the United Kingdom from which all
our industries can fish from. That is a big joining-up problem
across Government, not just for the support to make different
energy solutions, but across the universities and the school sectors,
making sure that were getting a constant message to have that
pull-through of people.
Michael Grave: It is not only
getting the engineers, it is getting the school children motivated
right and getting a joined-up path from school children through
to university through post-graduates and PhDs and continuous development
right to the end of their careers. And not only at the engineering
professional levels, it is important to have the technicians and
supporting people with the skills and the trades. Underpinning
all that, it is important that we need scientists as well, because
engineers basically start off studying science in most cases.
Q75 Dr Blackman-Woods: Is the capability
of the supply chain necessary to deliver new nuclear power stations
important as well?
Michael Grave: The supply chain
capability will appear, in our experience, if there is the market
to do it; engineering companies will come along and do it.
Robert Skelton: A guaranteed market
for more than one reactor, that is the problem. If we can see,
as they have in France, a guarantee that Britain is going to implement
a nuclear power programme then, not just the education establishment,
but everybody will see that it is worthwhile tooling up to do
it.
Michael Grave: There is global
risk, for example the company that owns the company that I work
for is building five nuclear power stations at the moment in Korea
and we are invited "if you fancy a career in Korea, to go
and work in Korea", so there is a draw all over the world
for engineers. We have a lot of Koreans over here as well.
Clive Smith: That would be very
much a global supply chain.
Michael Grave: It is a global
issue.
Q76 Mr Marsden: I would like to go
down a bit on this skills shortages issue, but if I can take you
back to something that was just said in response to the Chairman
to Roberta: you talked about the industry having a bright, attractive,
vibrant future, and the Chairman referred to his salad days when
it was the done thing to go into this area. That was the time
when we were all moonstruck too and we know what happened to some
elements of that. The serious point I want to make is, you are
talking about having this grand design connecting between schools,
colleges and universities, do you not still have a major image
and cultural obstacle to overcome? The written evidence that we
had from the Department about the actual diversity in the nuclear
industry at the moment says, "The nuclear industry is 82%
male, and overwhelmingly white, with females mostly in stereotypical
roles". First of all, is that a fair description at the moment,
and if it is a fair description and you think it is something
you need to overcome, how are you going to overcome it?
Clive Smith: I thought the percentage
of white males was higher than that in the nuclear industry, so
you have been quite generous. We have discussed the history of
the industry and the fact that it went into decline. There was
not a large recruitment; many of the people who were recruited
into the industry in the 1960s and 1970s into engineering jobs,
particularly the nuclear industry, were white and male. There
is also a geographical factor; the diversity around the remote
sites where many of the nuclear power station staff come from
is a generally white population; it is not reflective of the multicultural
city mix and so we will not ever get it towards that much greater
mix, but there is the ability to increase the gender and ethnic
mix.
Robert Skelton: There is an historic
factor here. When I joined the industry most of us who did joined
the Atomic Energy Authority or BFNL. No matter at what sort of
level you were working, you needed a fairly high level of security
clearance. Even contractors, way into the 1980s, had to be United
Kingdom citizens. It was not just for the Ministry of Defence
projects or BFNL projects in those days. This automatically of
course tends to bias you certainly towards the white, if not necessarily
male.
Q77 Mr Marsden: I hope you are not
going to suggest that women would be less secure than men.
Robert Skelton: No, but it must
be the age profile of the industry. In my undergraduate days,
there probably was not a single woman in engineering. Even now,
at Cambridge, we have only got about 20%.
Q78 Mr Marsden: Is this a problem?
Michael Grave: I see it as something
else. We have an organisation in the British Nuclear Energy Society
which we call the Young Generation Network[3]
and, interestingly, against all the trends, since the enthusiasm
for decommissioning and nuclear and even keeping the existing
stations operational, our membership has changed from about 1,000
people with 10% of people who we call young—and I will not
tell you why it is under the age of 37, but there is a reason
for that—now 40% of our membership is of the YGN age and
we have about 1500 or 1,600, and 50% of the chairmen of the YGN
in the last six years have been women and very good at that, in
fact.
Q79 Mr Marsden: Can we move to the
issue of competition. We have heard from UCLAN that they believe
there is going to be competition between decommissioning and new
build for talent in this sector. Is that inevitable; is it a good
thing or a bad thing?
Clive Smith: It is inevitable,
and if you take the military programmes also, there will be competition
with those programmes, it is an inevitable fact that the industry
has got to get over and ensure that salaries are attractive enough
to retain people within the legacy part of the programmes, as
well as the new build.
2 Note from the witness: "I am doing some
work with Nexia Solutions Ltd, which will become the NNL" Back
3
Note from the witness: "Associated with the European
Nuclear Society also" Back
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