GLOBAL: Nuclear engineering fights back

For long the Cinderella of the engineering industry, nuclear power appears to be regaining its popularity as a career choice with a surprising increase in university courses, mainly but not exclusively in the US. In some countries, such as France, enthusiasm has never faltered and a clear career pattern in nuclear sciences has been established for years.

In Britain, as in America, nuclear power is returning as a major factor in energy policy and a scramble for university courses appears to be underway. China has embarked on the fastest expansion of all and seems intent on turning out nuclear engineers by the thousand, though not without foreign help.

Does this mean that nuclear scientists are about become the stars of the engineering world, commanding high salaries and a range of enticing job prospects? Possibly, but not in the way it was 30 years ago.

A sampling of opinion by University World News suggests the main development is likely to be an internationalisation of the nuclear workforce centred on a cadre of professionals working to globally accepted standards: wholly mobile where political and physical locations are concerned, and almost certainly English-speaking.

Professor Ian Hutchinson, head of the department of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that while there are "great concerns in the nuclear industry as to whether they will have enough students, there are encouraging signs at the undergraduate level of a resurgence of interest among young undergraduates at all the major US nuclear programmes".

This interest is increasing by a factor of two or three "and that's very encouraging", Hutschinson said, though the same pattern was not being shown at the graduate level. In the US there had been a slight increase in masters of around 20% in the past five years but almost no increase in PhD levels.

"Here at MIT, we are predominantly a graduate department with just over 100 graduates doing masters and PhDs together, and about 50 undergraduate students," he said.

The renewed interest in nuclear engineering was driven by a number of factors: "But they include the fact that students, who are a leading indicator of opinion in society, think that nuclear power is important and has an important contribution to make to the challenges we face in energy and to the realisation that there are a lot of good jobs out there.

"I also think that interest in energy generally is a factor. In the US at any rate there has been something of a swing back away from computing and IT-related professions and talented maths and science graduates are turning back to industries like nuclear."

Hutchinson said China was "obviously a place where they're educating vast numbers of engineers, including nuclear engineers".

"But I think the important thing to recognise is that the nuclear industry is very much globalised and no country is going to be isolated by calling on just its own population for the expertise it requires. That's as true in China as it is in Europe or the US."

Earlier this year, U.S. News and World Report rated MIT as the number two nuclear engineering graduate school in the US, after the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. In all, there are around 40 recognised programmes running in US colleges and universities at present, turning out some 180 qualified nuclear scientists annually.

Some surveys put the numbers higher than this but there is general agreement that nuclear education in the US is currently running at about half the levels of 30 or so years ago, reflecting the retrenchment in the industry following the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island disasters.

Now the wheel may have turned full circle: "Most NE departments in the US are at capacity with regard to enrolment," said Professor Lee Dodds, head of nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee, regarded as the leading school in the American southeast.

"Nuclear engineering has become a very popular major in the last few years," Dodd says. What we need now are more resources such as faculty and space etc to handle the increase in enrolment."

Detailed information in the US is published annually by the American Nuclear Society's education and training division where the main criterion for school listing is that the graduate nuclear engineering programme has at least two full-time faculty or six full-time graduate nuclear engineering students.

The Nuclear Energy Institute in the US publishes a more comprehensive list of schools under geographical headings and both associations (and many others) give extensive practical advice on applying for courses, scholarships and other aspects of nuclear study.

In Europe generally, opinion has been divided and there is yet to appear an enthusiasm for NE qualifications on the scale of that in the US. In 2000, when the EU's Lisbon hi-tech strategy was conceived, NE was considered "a matter for concern", according to the OECD. "In some countries there are indicators that future expertise is at risk."

In most countries, there are now fewer comprehensive, high-quality nuclear technology programmes at universities than before. The ability of universities to attract top quality students, meet future staffing requirements of the nuclear industry, and conduct leading-edge research is becoming seriously compromised," said the OECD.

That judgement is probably just as true today but, unlike in the US, there is no up-to-date source of useful statistics. "We're preparing a technical report, Status and Trends in Nuclear Education, which will be the first proper global picture though it will not be out until next spring," said Yanko Yanev, head of the Nuclear Knowledge Management department of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "This will cover our report on the North American countries, Brazil, Argentine and Chile, and we're looking at the Asian Network for Education in Nuclear Technology," Yanev says. "We already have national reports from practically all Asian countries giving their attitudes to nuclear energy, nuclear medicine, and all other applications and of course Europe as well through the European Nuclear Engineering Network.

"I'd say there were fewer than 200 nuclear engineering graduates per year in the US and this is probably as much as all the European universities can produce. Perhaps the main problem is the popular perception of the nuclear profession which is still not high, although in terms of finding good, well paid jobs it's reasonably attractive compared to civil engineering."

Yanev mentioned the negative attitude taken by Germany: "There have been five or six zero years in which nobody was getting a diploma in the nuclear industry but Germany is going to need these engineers at the minimum for 60 to 70 years, regardless of whether they stop nuclear power. They still have to operate, still have to de-commission and they have been creating a generation gap for themselves."

The UK was not so badly placed because of initiatives taken by BNFL and Manchester and Liverpool universities but Yanev noted that 30 or 40 years ago, the UK had close to 10,000 people involved in nuclear activities, including R&D, but now it has shrunk to only several hundred and Britain will have to re-establish this: "The change in energy policy will require a new attitude," he said.

Elsewhere, the Chinese and the Indians are producing large numbers of nuclear specialists "but these specialists in China are more or less for China," he says. "The Indians are in a better position, as long as they are English-speaking. They can be marketed globally much more easily."

In France, nuclear engineering is a profession with good jobs and careers: "However when you look at France's commitments to build all over the world, they're lacking people and it will take many years until the present youngsters get the right expertise and skills."

Globally, Yanev sayid there was a need for industry, in its own long-term interests, to provide funding to universities for NE research. Among the world's best colleges were MIT and Texas A and M in the US, the two British ones and the Institut National des Sciences et Techniques Nucleaires (CEA) of France.

Yanev praised the European colleges for being "extremely cooperative in creating the ENEN network and agreeing a common curriculum and common system of point transfer so that you can study in France and complete in Hungary and vice versa."

But this kind of collaboration is far more difficult in Asia, Africa or Latin America where there are political borders and 'intolerance' between countries. For this reason, the IAEA is now actively trying to promote 'cyber-learning'. "If the physical borders are a real obstacle, we can probably work through the web and make sure that the students in Vietnam, for instance, get the same quality educational materials as students in other places.

"This approach is being actively pushed by MIT through its OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative - free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT."

A central contact for learning more about nuclear engineering in higher education is the World Nuclear University which serves to strengthen nuclear education and build future leadership in nuclear science and technology. The WNU's summer institute, a six-week course held in a different country each year, offers leadership opportunities for some 100 outstanding young nuclear professionals and academics from around the world and is highly regarded by nuclear educational institutions and presumably by future employers.

alan.osborn@uw-news.com