The Nuclear Industry Association of South Africa (Niasa) will be publishing its nuclear skills guideline document at the end of the year, which will form the basis of the planning process for South Africa’s eventual nuclear roll-out.

The document, which is the result of an initiative launched by Niasa, will highlight data collected from a number of skills surveys, as well as information from international sources. The document examines the different levels of skills required for each predicted nuclear roll-out scenario. This will assist government and university departments in the planning process, in preparation for the country’s anticipated nuclear roll-out.

“The skills development subcommittee of Niasa met with the deans of all the universities as part of this initiative, which started a year ago, to find a mechanism whereby tertiary nuclear education can be accel- erated once government has announced its intended nuclear energy roll-out programme,” says Niasa secretariat Gert Claassen.

To assist South Africa with the skills needs for a growing nuclear industry, Niasa has developed a collaborative tertiary education model, which aims to structure the way that tertiary education takes place, by increasing the resources available, while reducing the costs.

“To start up a nuclear engineering or nuclear science department is costly. Labora- tories are expensive to build and set up, and skills are in short supply, so obtaining the acade- mics is difficult and costly,” Claassen says.

He adds that, through this col- laborative model, all universities interested in participating will register a core course and resour- ces will be shared to ensure that a student will be able to take a core course at one university and the additional subjects required can be taken at another university that has the relevant facilities.

Claassen emphasises that there are a number of challenges to overcome for this to come into effect, including the existing funding model of universities. “We are, however, excited about the progress that we have made in conceptualising something like this and Niasa has founded a skills secretariat to establish all the types of nuclear-related education requirements that will be needed.”

This year, a new postgraduate degree programme is being initia- ted in South Africa, devoted to the future needs of the local industry and the nuclear regulator. The master’s in the science and organisaion of nuclear energy degree is part of a colla- borative programme being developed by iThemba LABS, the university of Johannesburg, Tshwane University of Tech- nology and the University of South Africa.

Discussions are also under way to have regional variations of this programme involving the Durban University of Tech- nology and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in Durban, as well as between the University of Western Cape, the Cape Univer- sity of Technology and iThemba LABS, in the Western Cape.

The master’s in the science and organisaion of nuclear energy programme complements the collaborative master’s in nuclear engineering programme, to which engineering schools at the universities of the North, Cape Town, Pretoria, Stellenbosch and the Witwatersrand have strongly committed themselves to.

The new degree, which was created as a result of a report by Niasa on the country’s nuclear sector, is a two-year course that will be accredited by the end of this year.