Young Professionals Mentoring Programme in The Nuclear Industry

The nuclear industry has been facing issues linked directly to the mixed feelings of the public opinion and national governments towards the use of nuclear energy for electricity production among others. Different institutions are aware of it and published reports on the challenges identified in this field, including the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and ESK (German Commission on Waste Management). In this paper is presented an analysis of said challenges and a possible solution, the network NANCY (Nuclear Applications newcomers CommunitY), an initiative currently in phase of development at the focus field Nuclear Waste Management, in the university of applied sciences FH Aachen, Germany.


Introduction
The public opinion of NPPs (Nuclear Power Plants) suffered numerous set-back in the last 40 years, first due to the Chernobyl accident in 1986 [2] [3] and then more recently due to Fukushima [5] [6] [7].Before the latter happened, in 2004 the IAEA published a technical document on the issue of ageing in the nuclear power industry's workforce [1].In this document it was acknowledged the existence of the following issues: more and more of the personnel working in NPPs was reaching retirement age and not enough young people were ready to follow their footsteps.Furthermore it was also identified for Germany (taken as case study) a decrease in the availability of relevant higher educational programs focusing on topics relevant for the nuclear industry.A particular worry was a loss of "tacit knowledge", described as knowledge held by a person which is not typically transferred in a formal way, the kind of knowledge that is acquired while working in a workplace over time and experience, exposure to experts, "tricks of the trade" passed down generations.With the experts retiring and not enough newcomers entering the industry, there is legitimate fear of losing such tacit knowledge, in the ways it is currently passed down [1].

The German issue
The famous "Energiewende" (Energy Transition), started in Germany in 2010, stated Germany's future intentions in phasing out fossil fuel and nuclear for power production.Nuclear energy or generally the nuclear industry suffered a lot from the negative advertisement and nowadays Germany is facing challenges and issues derived from this bad publicity.In 2017 ESK (Entsorgungskommission, Disposal Commission) published a memorandum showing concern on the topic of preserving and transferring knowledge across generations in the nuclear waste management field.They associated the public perception of nuclear as a negative image linked to a career in the field, making it less attractive [4].
In the text various issues were identified: first of all, a strong need to enlarge the workforce of specialists, worsened by the migration of some of the experts to other fields and by the high average age in the community, with a good percentage of the professionals to retire within few years [4].Furthermore the memorandum put focus on the maintenance of competences and the need of developing appropriate interdisciplinary training and on-boarding for young professionals.
3. Identified challenges for the nuclear industry ESK's memorandum paper identifies some of the issues affecting the nuclear industry in Germany, which can be partially applied to other countries.Countries entering now for the first time the nuclear industry are struggling with available experts and on-boarding the workforce, lack of an existing structure and the challenges brought by starting from zero with such a complex topic.Countries with history in the nuclear industry face a whole different set of issues: a steady increase in the average age of the specialized staff, with more people retiring than newcomers entering the industry, which is particularly accentuated for management or leading roles, coupled with an inevitable loss of "old" knowledge due to the lack of direct on-boarding from experts to newcomers.Other issues are migration to other fields, either more attractive or with less on-boarding requirements, and competence building.The latter suffers from the bad publicity of nuclear sciences which is also affecting the higher education courses offered in the field, with a decrease of specialized courses linked to the nuclear industry and consequently a decrease in young professionals with the right skills and knowledge.

The helicopter view
A very good analogy to describe the situation is the so called helicopter view: each party is looking at its own problems and trying to figure out solutions, while the best approach would be to take a step back, or above, and have a more integrated complete idea of the full picture.The first and most important element of the full picture are the students that need to go through the system, be educated in the right field, and join the nuclear industry.They face all different issues, depending on their background, the family economical possibilities, from which country they are from, where they are studying, physical and mental health, and so on.Industry and research centers have a similar position/role as potential workplace, and their needs are linked to the need to hire skilled personnel and continuously replace the retiring experts.Universities have the educator role, but also the unique position of being the "bridge" that links students to their future workplace.They need lecturers able to transfer the right knowledge to the students, a sufficient amount of students to guarantee an extension of the offered courses, they need to be appealing and interesting and keep up with how the research and the industry evolve.
The government, a silent partner, has great interest in the nuclear industry being supported due to its relevance for the society (medical care, nuclear waste management, energy production, basic research, etc.) and is strongly linked to public universities.Retired experts are another element to this picture, which represents the experience, the history, the lessons learnt.They are very important because they close the circle.Their opinion and expertise are fundamental even if not directly used any more work-wise.The final element are the social media, which have great potential but also represent a great treat with adverse publicity and feeding anti-nuclear movements and could reduce the number of students interested in joining the nuclear industry.Putting together all the individual pieces, quite a lot of issues solve themselves alone: students needing guidance can receive precious advice from the retired experts; the industry and research centers can help universities keeping up-to-date with the latest discoveries and skill requirements.The government can financially help universities and promoting the required job profiles, together with the help of social media.Interested students, also thanks to the social media and public involvement, keep the universities and study courses alive.Unfortunately, reality is not as simple, but working together on the common issue is a key to solve the challenges and issues currently present.

The road to the solution
In March 2021 the new focus field "Nuclear Waste Management" was introduced at the university FH Aachen University of Applied Science, in Germany, under the master "Nuclear Applications".This focus field, supported and financed by BGZ (German Federal Company for Interim Storage), included directly in its first year an interesting extra-curricular activity, which was traveling with a delegation of students to Vienna to participate to the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) conference on Radioactive Waste Management held there in November 2021.Two external lecturers joined the trip as well and had a chance to get to know their students outside of office hours.The event was a success and the students participated to both the opening and closing session of the conference, dedicated to the young generation: in the opening session some experts gave a talk about their career, why and how they chose to join the nuclear industry, and provided the young generation with insightful advice.On the closing session, the young generation spoke, giving feedback and reacting to the 5 days conference.This open communication between all the parties (university, industry, research, retired experts, young generation) inspired the presents and it became clear the need to bridge the gap and the need for better communication.After Vienna, an online event was held in May 2022, on the atomondo hub, focused on the idea to build a network for the young generation linking them to the "rest of the picture": research centers, industry, universities, experts, students, social media cooperating together.The initial used name was YPMP, Young Generation Mentoring Programme.In this initial meeting, few representatives from the industry, existing young generation societies, students and young experts, spoke about themselves and what were the needs and challenges for them and an initial idea of how to bridge the gap started taking form.At university level an innovative teaching approach called "3 source model" started being developed: • International expert lecturers (hybrid approach): during the Covid pandemic it became clear the great potential held by hybrid teaching, with international experts able to reach students from all around the globe and not limited by physically being close to the university • Psychological Mentoring Programme, for the students, because also soft "people" skills are required in this field and it is important to give the right space to the human psychological factor • Regulatory bodies and stakeholder inputs, the contribution from the government and a global approach showing how different countries deal with for example nuclear waste management regulations and what each country can learn from others Together with that, a summer school is planned to complement the curricular study with extracurricular activities to show to the students application of the knowledge being given to them: Asse and Konrad mines repositories in Germany, excursions to the advanced nuclear fuel facility in Lingen (DE), a week in Italy at the plutonium plant in decommissioning phase, participation to conferences, etc.
At the industry and research centers level, one of the main contribution would be with teaching and helping the universities updating the curriculum to what's needed nowadays.With helping choosing the study programme, there is also a direct benefit for the workplace, with making sure that the students leave the university after having acquired the necessary skills.Naturally another big factor is a more direct cooperation with the students, by offering projects, thesis, internships, practical training to complement the laboratories available during the study course.
Furthermore conferences and networking are other pillars, necessary for the young generation to get in contact with more people linked to their field, listen and learn from their experience, understand better what they want for their own future.
Necessary will be a web-based platform for sharing of information, resources, jobs, opportunities, combined with adopting known platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and more traditional emails, trying to reach all the generations and their preferred communication methods.

Conclusions
Currently the NANCY project is at research phase, investigating what each group (universities, students, research centers, industry, etc) need and what they can offer before deciding in which exact direction to go.The website can be found at nancy.education, currently under construction.The writer of this paper is participating to numerous conferences and connecting with young generation and young generation societies, as well as starting projects for students in need of a thesis project as pilot for cooperation with various companies.In order to ensure to properly understand what are the major challenges to overcome great care is being put in this phase and any feedback, critic, advice is welcomed.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The "Helicopter View", showing how each individual sector is looking at the issues in an isolated way, ignoring the big picture.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Young Generation Mentoring Network kick-off banner and participating parties