Nuclear’s Got Talent With Callum Thomas

When you look across Europe at the nuclear workforce right now, what is happening?

There's a lot happening.

I mean, I guess I have two roles.

One is I'm the CEO of Thomas Thor and we do the recruiting, search, workforce consulting and nuclear.

But my other hat, I'm the chair of the talent and workforce development group at the World Nuclear Association.

That gives me a really useful dual perspective on the sector.

And through the WNA work, we get to see what's happening in all kinds of different countries around the world, of course.

But obviously I'm in Europe, so I'm particularly close to the industry here.

The UK that's actually building nuclear power plants, we've got one that's deep into construction and another one that's starting and then an SMR one that's going to start soon.

But apart from that, It's really project development.

That's what's going on in Europe.

You've got France, which is a huge nuclear nation, like three-quarters of its electricity comes from nuclear, and they're preparing to enlarge their fleet and go for another wave of new builds.

Then you've got the other countries looking at new build, either from an existing industry like the Netherlands, where they have one nuclear power plant, or Bulgaria.

or in Poland, for example, where they've got no nuclear.

So we've got all these countries then that are looking at large scale nuclear reactors, either to add to one or two they have or for the first time.

Then we've got the countries that are looking at SMR, probably I'd pick Sweden at the forefront there.

I mean, you could say the UK as well, because they're actually building a Rolls Royce one now.

But Sweden is leading its strategy with the SMR.

So they're now inviting interest from the SMR vendors around the world.

And there'll be other countries in Europe doing that as well.

Then you've got countries that have reversed or are reversing.

Belgium that was going to phase out nuclear and now it looks like it's going to rise.

We've got Switzerland who's made it illegal to build more nuclear energy infrastructure and now it looks like they're going to reverse that.

You've got Italy that's about to reverse the law on nuclear energy as well.

Pretty much every country in Europe is doing something.