Europe’s aggressive plan to expand its nuclear industry for the energy transition is hampered by a lack of key components: skilled workers, reports Bloomberg.

Nuclear power producers in France, Britain and Sweden are struggling to find hundreds of thousands of welders, engineers and planners for the reactors they are building now and those planned for mid-century.

This is why representatives of the French state group EDF (Electricite de France SA) and three subcontractors recently met in a high school classroom in Roussillon, a small town near the Saint-Alban nuclear power plant. As part of a new recruitment initiative, they advertised training programs and employment opportunities for young people from industrial maintenance courses, according to Agerpres.

“Every company is hiring, especially in the nuclear industry, especially now with the new reactor projects. We rely on you and your teachers to improve your skills,” Morgane Robin, from a nuclear company, explained to the students. recruitment working for Dalkia EN, the maintenance division of EDF.

Nuclear energy is being revitalized after 25 countries, mostly from Europe, have set themselves the goal of helping to triple global capacity. But implementation of the plans is being hampered by a shortage of workers, which is so acute that some companies in France have postponed retirements, the British Government is advertising careers in the industry in London tube stations, and a Swedish University is offering free sandwiches to students who attend information sessions.

“Nuclear energy is on the rise again. We need well-trained people to carry out the projects. We don’t have much time to react,” said Philippe Lanoir, from the French Syntec-Ingenierie business federation.

France is facing a shortage of skilled workers after EDF ended its decade-long expansion of nuclear capacity in the early 2000s, reducing demand for workers in the field. The approximately 220,000 employees have aged, and other potential employees are looking at opportunities in other fields. The industry wants to recruit 100,000 employees in the next decade, through professional training courses for workers, technicians and engineers.

President Emmanuel Macron wants EDF to build six reactors, for about 67.4 billion euros, and then eight more. These ambitions could be affected by the current general elections.

Potentially, a quarter of the jobs created by EDF’s plans could go unfilled, the Lanoir group estimates, as current employees begin to retire, schools fail to qualify students and young people choose more dynamic industries , such as wind and solar energy.

EDF, which took 17 years to build its newest nuclear plant, concluded that the lack of employees was the main obstacle to achieving the plans presented by Macron in 2022. That year, the company imported employees from North America to reactor repairs.