Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 139)
WEDNESDAY 16 JULY 2008
DR IAN
HUDSON, MR
ALEX WALSH,
MS FIONA
WARE AND
MR BILL
BRYCE
Q120 Dr Gibson: Yes.
Mr Bryce: I do not think we are.
Mr Walsh: We are not paying off
their student debt; we are paying good wages to graduates coming
in. During the last year we have recruited five graduates specifically
into the nuclear area and we have put in for a nuclear engineering
training.
Q121 Chairman: I am talking now not
about graduates. I am talking about post-docs.
Mr Walsh: We have taken one in.
Q122 Chairman: One.
Mr Walsh: Our first PhD student
this year into the nuclear area. We have taken in three people
with a Masters degree. They are coming through things like Birmingham's
Physics, Technology and Nuclear Reactors course. That is a very
good course.
Q123 Dr Gibson: Are you excited by
having four new people?
Mr Walsh: Yes, I am. In total,
the number of graduates that we have taken on this year is 85.
We have taken on 165 apprentices. We have just been out and started
recruiting A-level students, to bring them in. If we get our apprentices,
we run a high potential apprentice scheme for those top level
apprentices we take on and we push through as fast as possible.
Q124 Dr Gibson: There are too many
ifs in your answer. You are not sure.
Mr Walsh: I am sure. We do put
people through university degrees.
Q125 Dr Gibson: Fiona, you are champing
at the bit there. Tell me about Gen-IV. What is happening?
Ms Ware: I will, but perhaps I
could go back to what you asked before. AMEC has a long heritage
of looking after some of these skills and capabilities from when
we built the last fleet of stations. We have put money into the
PNTR MSc at Birmingham, we provide lecturers at Surrey, and we
provide industrial sponsorships to sponsor PhD students. We have
recently started participating in the Eng D programme. We only
took one as a trial, because it was a new programme, but we are
planning to take more. We are taking 70 graduate trainees on this
year. The majority of those will have a Masters degree. We generally
take three or four people a year from the Birmingham Masters degree.
Moving on to Generation-IV: participation in the international
research programmes is a way that we have managed to maintain
and transfer skills. Whilst there has been no new build in the
UK, through participation and work on the Gen-IV research programmes,
through ITER and JET, the fusion programmes, and also through
the European frameworks, those are really good packages of work
where we can get our more experienced engineers to transfer their
skills to the junior engineers. It is very difficult to do that
on commercial contracts because the client will not pay. They
will pay for one person to do the work. We have relied heavily
on those research programmes, to develop, to maintain and to transfer
skills.
Q126 Dr Gibson: What has happened
with Generation IV? How much does this industry put in, how much
do the Government put in? Do you have to buy your way to the table?
Ms Ware: The Government were due
to put in £5 million, but that funding was cancelled last
year, which was a disappointment.
Q127 Dr Gibson: That is bad news.
How are you going to substitute for that? Are you going to put
the money in yourselves? You are going to be a rich industry—or
you are a rich industry.
Ms Ware: The difficulty is the
long-term nature of it. We ourselves are part of the supply chain
but we are not a utility. We do not have the benefit of saying,
"We'll invest in future generation reactors because we will
get the benefit because it will be our design later." We
have taken rather an altruistic view, perhaps, to say that we
will do what we can to participate in the programmes because we
know that is how we would keep those high level skills alive.
It has been very difficult.
Q128 Dr Gibson: But you are not going
to get a Christmas card or an invite to the table to talk about
these things unless you are paying your whack, basically.
Ms Ware: Yes, and I think we are
disadvantaged when you look at other European countries. If you
look at France, in particular, they have complementary parallel
programmes, so that allows industry access to the extra funding
so that they can participate in the programmes. Within the United
Kingdom we have an uncoordinated approach and we do not have any
parallel programmes, so that makes it more difficult to compete.
Q129 Dr Gibson: What other international
programmes are we participating in or should we participate in
if we want to get to the top table and get new schemes going and
education, your PhD students, and double your numbers from four
to eight, for example? You are going to have to get into these
international programmes.
Ms Ware: The Government, I believe,
are signed up to GNEP. There are no programmes of work yet that
have come out of that. We would ask for continued support to that.
The Government signed up to Gen-IV and then the funding was not
forthcoming, so if we know that—
Q130 Dr Gibson: Who should foot that
bill? Should the Government restore it or should you have some
kind of collaboration?
Ms Ware: I would like to see the
Government restore that funding.
Q131 Dr Gibson: Of course you would.
At the same time, the Government are not going to by the sound
of it, are they?
Ms Ware: I do not know. We would
like to think so.
Q132 Dr Gibson: Does anybody know?
You must know, Bill. You are the boss.
Mr Bryce: Before I answer your
question, the thing that is going to set the industry in the UK
up for the future is a healthy clean-up programme, successful
clean-up and a healthy new build programme. That will start attracting
people. There is no point in doing research if we do not have
the application of it. Once we have both of those things—and
we cannot go into new build sacrificing clean-up. This is very
important to all of industry as we go forward, to make sure that
we do not pinch the guys from the clean-up side and switch them
into new build.
Q133 Chairman: Can you concentrate
on the question that was asked.
Mr Bryce: Coming back to the question:
with that basis, if we can get ourselves into a sound clean-up
and new build programme, people will be attracted into the industry
and you will see the numbers increasing quite dramatically.
Q134 Dr Gibson: That is what you
are saying.
Mr Bryce: But I think Government
are going to have to prime the pumps on these more advanced research
programmes. Industry is not going to put its money in at this
stage in substantial amounts because it is a long time before
payback will be achieved. There are several projects. ITER is
one. Gen-IV is another. Industry is somewhat reticent to get involved
there because the payback is looking very, very doubtful.
Q135 Dr Gibson: In the long term
you are going to need that research, because nuclear plants and
styles and so on and the operation change.
Mr Bryce: That is right. That
is why I say: get ourselves established with new build of Generation-III
and the rest will spin out of that.
Dr Gibson: Good luck.
Q136 Dr Iddon: Is everybody on the
panel agreed that the skills required for decommissioning are
roughly the same as those required for new build? In other words,
if we train people for decommissioning, can we roll them over
into new build?
Mr Bryce: There is a lot of new
build going on to enable decommissioning to happen. There are
several new facilities being built in Sellafield—and Ian
can say more about these—and, therefore, these skills can
roll over. In fact, they are a bit more critical because the work
that is going on in decommissioning is an active plant, a radiologically
active plant. There the nuclear disciplines have to be so much
more severe because you are dealing with the radioactive conditions.
Therefore, all the very stringent nuclear procedures are being
learned and practised today in the clean-up process and these
will spin over.
Q137 Dr Iddon: Perhaps I ought to
turn to Ian. Do you see the NDA's role as partly to enable this
roll over from decommissioning to new build? Do you think you
have a role to train people through your decommissioning work,
so that when new build ramps up we have sufficient skills available?
Dr Hudson: I think that is an
interesting question. From an NDA perspective, let me try to answer
that in two parts. The first thing is that NDA can only invest
to support the clean-up mission in the way set out in the Energy
Act, so our investment is around supporting the clean-up mission.
We are investing quite heavily, and we can talk about that in
a minute. There is a recognition, though, that some of those skills
are transferable, and it has happened in the industry. Historically,
if you look at the NDA, for instance, we have people who built
reactors who are now pulling reactors down. We are focusing on
transferable skills which are with the nuclear industry, so when
we move people from operations into decommissioning we can get
that flexibility of workers, so we are building that into our
strategy. But it has to be dead clear, from our perspective, that
we do not have a role in respect of new build. We are not allowed
to do that.
Q138 Dr Iddon: In their submission
BAE has suggested that the UK should ramp up decommissioning work
to increase skills in readiness for new build. What sort of assurances
would industry need to make significant investments in core staff
and facilities?
Ms Ware: In terms of decommissioning,
as I said before, we now have visibility of the lifetime plans.
Seeing that there are long-term programmes and that there is funding
available is enough to encourage the supply chain to respond and
to grow the capability. For new build, I think it is government
support. The industry suffered during the last period of new build,
because we built Sizewell, and there was an expectation that that
would be a programme of reactors, and it was only one. A lot of
companies prepared themselves and geared up to do that and then
the opportunity disappeared. What is required really is a commitment
to a programme and the supply chain will respond accordingly.
Q139 Dr Iddon: AMEC have suggested
that there should be a stronger interface between the civil and
military activities in this area. Security is the obvious barrier,
but what other barriers are there? Is the main one security or
are there other barriers preventing an interface between civil
and military activities?
Ms Ware: Probably there will be
commercial reasons. As AMEC, we are part of the supply chain,
so we provide resources into all of the sectors, into reactor
operations, into clean-up, and into Rolls Royce and AWE. We see
there is transferability of skills and we can help in terms of
transferring best practice from one section of the industry to
the other. From an AMEC perspective, I can comment that skills
are transferable. How the sectors work together is probably more
a matter for people in the team.
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