Shortage of atomic experts plagues nuclear industry

With a `death warrant’" hanging over the nuclear industry, particularly in west Europe, a moot question raised by nuclear experts is how will nuclear operators, regulatory bodies and fuel suppliers recruit the talent needed to run and service existing plants or, if necessary, to close them down and decontaminate the sites.

A nuclear engineering professor in one of Germany’s leading technical univesities in Dresden said the nuclear industry was a `shrinking industry’ amidst growing perception that hostility to atomic power plants has grown over the years.

The nuclear industry in Europe is also of the view that the supply of well-trained engineers andscientists is starting to dry up.German universities are cutting back their nuclear engineering programmes, partly because of the low interest among students and also because their professors are nearing retirement.

“Lack of research funds and low enrolment is going to force universities to drop nuclear studies,” according to the Dresden professor Juergen Knorr.Many faculties have only one staff member for nuclear studies, he added.The antagonists of nuclear power have got a big boost with the new left of centre government in Germany under pressure from the Greens Party — tasting power for the first time at the federal level, working out plans to phase out nuclear plants in the country.

Germany gets an estimated 30 per cent of electricity from nuclear power from its 19 atomic power plants.

Germany’s north-western neighbour, Netherlands, is facing a situation where nuclear studies at universities such as the prestigious Delft have all but deserted by Dutch nationals.

The root cause for the downfallof the importance of nuclear power is being attributed to political opposition and constant skepticism discouraging young people.

A senior official in a Dutch engineering group has been quoted as saying that until now recruiting well-trained employees was not a problem but now there was a growing concern that it was no longer the case.

Meanwhile, according to new German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin of the Greens Party, the government expects to start closing the country’s 19 power plants. However, no time frame has been set for the closure.

As a first step, the government plans negotiations with the power industry, which has threatened to sue for billions of marks in damages if the administration closes nuclear plants without its consent.

Even in developing countries, the climate of intolerance towards the nuclear industry as a whole have undergone a sea- change. People pursuing nuclear science have become far and few and those already in the profession are thinking of switching over to otherlucrative fields. Countries in the sub-continent however are yet to pick up the threads of anti-nuclear sentiment. Nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May have been greeted with enthusiasm by their countrymen.