from Sunday Herald, 13 January 2008
The UK government’s new nuclear power programme could be delayed because of an acute shortage of nuclear safety inspectors.
As many as a hundred new inspectors will have to be hired over the next four years in order to assess new reactor designs and to keep checking existing nuclear plants.
But if the recruitment campaign fails, timetables would be prone to slippage, according to trade unions and the government’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which runs the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate.
There are currently 168 nuclear inspectors in post, responsible for the safe operation and decommissioning of all the UK’s 32 nuclear sites. Thirteen of the inspectors have already been allocated to a generic safety assessment programme for new reactors.
According to Mike Macdonald from the trade union Prospect, which represents nuclear inspectors, 30 more are needed to assess the four proposed reactor designs. A further 25 inspectors are required to ensure the safety of existing plants.
Allowing for the 45 likely to retire over the next few years, that means a total of 100 more inspectors need to be hired, Macdonald argued. If that doesn’t happen, he told the Sunday Herald, “we’d have to look at revising plans and possibly timescales”.
The HSE says it is hoping to recruit another 40 inspectors with its current advertising campaign, launched last month. But it accepts that if suitable staff can’t be found, plans for assessing new reactors might have to be “revised”.
There is a worldwide shortage of skilled nuclear scientists and engineers, prompting industrialised countries in the OECD to warn last October that the regulation and expansion of nuclear power could suffer as a result. To help overcome the problem in the UK, the Treasury last month awarded nuclear inspectors an inflation-busting pay rise of 15%.
“It’s an exceptional case because of the problems of recruitment and retention,” said an HSE spokesman. “We hope to be able to attract the right calibre of candidate.”
In its submission to the government’s energy review in 2006, the HSE warned that this was a significant problem. “Recruitment of appropriately qualified and experienced staff has proven difficult for the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate in recent years,” it said.
Environmental groups said yesterday that the shortage was “worrying”, and part of a wider issue. “The decision to promote nuclear power will leave renewables and energy efficiency solutions starved of skills and resources,” argued Duncan McLaren from Friends of the Earth Scotland.
Meanwhile, the Dounreay nuclear complex in Caithness confessed yesterday that an early morning fire had delayed nuclear waste management staff returning to work after the New Year. “The cause is being investigated,” a Dounreay spokesman said.
Procedures for handling radioactive waste at the defunct fast reactor had also been overhauled, he said. “A safety inspection carried out during the move of an old experimental sub-assembly was found to have breached safety regulations about how such material should be handled.”
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