A new Brexit worry: welders for nuclear plants

Britain’s plan to revitalize its aging nuclear energy infrastructure is likely to take a hit if Brexit jeopardizes a crucial supply: welders.

The skilled workers have been in short supply for years, a strain that will probably worsen as new nuclear projects are built. About13 per cent of Britain’s welders come from other countries in the European Economic Area, according to the Migration Advisory Committee, which keeps a list of occupations with a shortage of workers.

Without those additional workers, it’s likely to become more difficult and costly to build and operate multi-billiondollar atomic plants, which are crucial to the U.K.’s target to produce net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The stress is already apparent at Electricité de France SA’s £19.6 billion ($31 billion) Hinkley Point C project, the only nuclear plant now under construction in Britain.

“Hinkley requires a large number of welders,” said Peter Haslam, who retired last week as head of policy at the Nuclear Industry Association. “We need these people to have easy access to the U.K.”

Nuclear power makes up about a fifth of Britain’s electricity, and most of those plants are aging and will close in the next decade. Even with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s call for a “nuclear renaissance,” replacing them won’t be easy. EDF’s Hinkley Point is still under construction and won’t produce any electricity for at least six years.

An undertaking such as Hinkley Point requires at least 500 welders, of which about 75 need to be the highest-trained kind, said Guy Hazlehurst, workforce development director at EDF.

“The U.K. is dealing with a much wider skills shortage, in all sorts of areas,” said Andrew Cockcroft, a spokesperson at EDF. “Even if Brexit wasn’t occurring, there would still be a welding shortage. It does exacerbate the problem.”

To deal with the issue, EDF is spending millions to train a new crop of workers. The company is helping to organize funding for a welding education facility on top of $24 million it has already spent on training in the area near Hinkley Point. For someone who is new to welding, the training can take about three years to reach the high standard necessary to work on a challenging nuclear project.

“Regardless of the outcome of Brexit, if we are short of a certain skill-set for a certain amount of time, then the work still needs to be done,” said Andy Brown, director of operations at the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board, which helps train industrial workers. “There will be barriers and that will impact on schedule and if it impacts schedule, it will impact on costs.”