H. KEHRER/ZEFA/CORBISFrançois Perchet, an electrical engineer by training, has seen the ebb and flow of the nuclear power industry in the course of his long career. He spent more than 30 years with the French electricity company EDF, which operates the country's 58 nuclear reactors, and knew most of the 19 nuclear plant sites in France. He worked in operations management, then in maintenance and repair, and later in probability-based safety studies. But last December, he crossed the English Channel for a two-year assignment as programme coordinator with the World Nuclear University (WNU) in London, where he helps promote nuclear training and education throughout the world.
Now Perchet informs the public about the risks and benefits of nuclear power, an industry with big image problems. The stigma of nuclear power as a dangerous and toxic ticking time bomb has not only stymied industry investments and government funding but, critically, dissuaded young physicists, engineers and technicians from entering the field — so much so that the shortage threatens to thwart a potential nuclear renaissance.
But Perchet believes that attitudes towards the industry and its associated professions are changing. "In these difficult times, people start thinking about jobs for life," he says. "The nuclear power industry can't offer the huge salaries and bonuses that some bankers have been paid. But we can offer safe positions and a broad range of interesting career opportunities, from management to reactor development."
"There is a strong and increasingly competitive job market emerging." Carol BerriganNUCLEAR ENERGY INSTITUTELike Perchet, most nuclear engineers worldwide were recruited in the 1970s, before the near meltdown in 1979 at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union seven years later destroyed any remaining public faith in the safety of nuclear power and shattered the reputation of the nuclear industry as a whole. Nevertheless, there are 439 commercial nuclear-power reactors in 31 countries currently providing some 15% of total electricity supply worldwide, and the industry seems to have survived the fallout of these debacles as well as more minor accidents.
Still, the decades-long recruitment drought means that reactor manufacturers and operators are now facing the challenge of replacing almost half of their ageing workforce, including tens of thousands of qualified scientists and engineers around the world who are set to retire in the next 10 years.
Nuclear power is a major ingredient in the energy mix of many industrialized nations, most notably in France, where 77% of electricity comes from nuclear plants. In the United States, 104 reactors operated by 32 licensed utilities generate around one-fifth of the nation's electricity. Ukraine (48%), Sweden (46%), South Korea (35%), Japan (28%), Germany (22%), Russia (16%) and the United Kingdom (15%) all depend substantially on nuclear power as well. Growth, however, has been mainly confined to Asia of late; no new plants have been built in the United States or western Europe for more than 25 years.
Despite its image problems, many countries have continued conducting nuclear science over the years, including research into reactor design and nuclear safety. In 2001, 13 nations formed the Generation IV International Forum to coordinate efforts for the development of a next-generation reactor. Roughly 3,000 scientists worldwide are involved in generation IV reactor development; others are working in safety research.
Nuclear energy is now set for a comeback, with global warming from excessive fossil-fuel consumption accelerating and growing concerns over future energy security. Recently, many Western countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Finland and Sweden, have abandoned de facto moratoria on building new plants. China and India also plan to extend their as yet small nuclear capacities. Plans exist to build at least 127 new reactors by 2020: China, India, Russia, Japan and the United States, for example, plan more than ten new reactors each. Other interested countries include Brazil, South Africa, Vietnam, South Korea, Poland, Ukraine and Thailand. Under the most far-reaching scenario described in the report Nuclear Energy Outlook, published last year by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Nuclear Energy Agency, up to 1,400 reactors of the size commonly in use today — producing 1,000–1,500 megawatts of electric power — would be in operation by 2050 worldwide.
"Today's students couldn't care less about the nuclear resentments of old." Joachim KnebelFORSCHUNGSZENTRUM KARLSRUHEThe search is on for the scientists and engineers who will design, build and operate these nuclear reactors, but also for the experts who will guide uranium mining, design and partition nuclear fuels (that is, transmute radioactive waste into non-radioactive elements), dispose of radioactive waste, and protect nuclear workers and the world at large from harmful radiation. "There is a strong and increasingly competitive job market emerging," says Carol Berrigan, who monitors the nuclear workforce for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group based in Washington DC.
Academic institutions have responded to the nuclear comeback. Many universities have revived nuclear programmes that closed in the 1980s and 1990s because of lack of demand. In the United States alone, six new departments or programmes have been created in recent years at universities in Colorado, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, and there are plans to set up programmes at the University of California, Los Angeles, and possibly also at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Since 1999, enrolment in undergraduate nuclear engineering programmes in the United States has grown from 470 to around 2,000, while graduate enrolments have climbed from 220 to around 1,200, Berrigan found.
In Europe, advanced training and master's programmes in nuclear engineering exist, for example, at the University of Paris South 11, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Lausanne, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. In the United Kingdom, vocational training and advanced courses in nuclear engineering are also offered by industry agencies such as Cogent and the National Skills Academy for Nuclear.
When it comes to exploiting that education, prospects in the US job market are promising. Graduate and postgraduate science and engineering students interested in pursuing a career in the nuclear industry have ample choices between jobs at government labs, with private plant operators, in reactor construction or in the defence business, says Michael Corradini, head of nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. "It's an incredibly healthy and vibrant environment for us right now, despite the economic downturn," he says. "Most of my students can choose from at least a handful of job offerings; ten years ago they were glad when they got one." Students often start with bachelor's degrees in civil, chemical or process engineering, then specialize in nuclear engineering as part of a master's degree.
The Penly nuclear power plant, located northeast of Dieppe, France.Employment prospects in many regions of Europe are just as encouraging. "If a talented student turns up today, he or she will have a work contract tomorrow, either from me or from a company we're collaborating with," says Joachim Knebel, head of nuclear safety research and acting head of neutron physics and reactor technology at KIT. The Areva Nuclear Professional School was established at KIT in February, funded by Areva, the Paris-based company that is the world's largest manufacturer of reactor components and nuclear fuel. It provides postgraduate training for young scientists and engineers specializing in various fields of nuclear engineering. The 30 PhD students enrolled at the school at any one time are paid by Areva and have a guarantee that they will be employed when their training is completed. Areva, with a workforce of 75,000 and 
13.2 billion (US$17.2 billion) in global sales, is the market leader in the field and is now hiring about 1,000 people a month globally. Engineers of all sorts, from civil, electromechanical, chemical and process engineers to automation and computation experts, account for roughly one-half of newly hired staff.
Ongoing technological challenges should provide work for the most enterprising. Generation IV nuclear reactors are intended to replace current types such as the European Pressurized Reactor (also called Evolutionary Power Reactor or just EPR), a generation III reactor design that uses water under high pressure as coolant. A mammoth research and development challenge ahead is the next generation of thermal and fast reactors (where the chain reaction is sustained by fast neutrons), which are designed to produce significantly less radioactive waste, to cost less and to be less vulnerable to violent attack. In principle, these systems would partition and reprocess nuclear waste repeatedly, which will require new technologies and new materials. These reactors could become commercially available in 20 to 30 years' time.
With the problem of safe nuclear-waste disposal unresolved, and the no less worrisome risk of proliferation of weapon-grade uranium and plutonium, nuclear power has not ceased to be controversial. But resistance to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, commonplace in global youth counterculture from the 1960s to the 1980s, has lost its fury. "Today's generation of engineering students couldn't care less about the nuclear resentments of old," says Knebel.
Significant advances in reactor safety and nuclear fuel reprocessing technologies have helped. But it's the risk of unabated global warming that has made carbon-free nuclear power more acceptable, notes Annette Heinzel, a 35-year-old materials scientist at KIT who develops lead-cooled steel for the next reactor generation. "Back in 1999, most of my friends were a bit shocked when I left geology to pursue a career in nuclear reactor technology," she says. "Ten years on, things have changed quite a lot. People have become more open-minded and most find it easy now to accept what I'm doing."
