3.1
Our People and Facilities
Implementing a successful science and technology programme must go hand-in-hand with the investments we make in our people.
By attracting, supporting and retaining diverse talent, we can maintain the skills and capabilities needed to deliver our commercial contracts and develop the next wave of innovators.
Through our newly redesigned Early Careers Programme, we are pledging to recruit at least 50 people each year, opening our doors to more apprentices, undergraduates, graduates and post doctorates. This will give our nation’s brightest young minds an avenue where they can develop their scientific curiosity and make a positive difference to society.
We greatly value the continued personal and professional development of our people and invest appropriately in their skills and training. We offer Career Pathways for Science, Engineering and People Management and have recently created a new Careers Hub where our people can access a variety of personal development opportunities.
For our senior leaders, we encourage Charterships and Professional Registrations, and deliver our very own Fellowship programme. To ensure it reflects the intellectual diversity we are proud to foster here at NNL, our Fellows represent an array of specialisms and backgrounds – from science and engineering to public engagement.
As well as developing our people within NNL, we provide talented individuals from other organisations and sectors with access to our specialist facilities. Since 2015, we have granted user access to around 12 different organisations each year, predominantly at our Workington and Central Laboratories. We also welcome around 50 independent researchers each year.
We are grateful to the government who have funded the National Nuclear User Facility (NNUF) project in order to help us meet the demand for our facilities. As we look ahead, our aim is to operate our infrastructure as a user centre so it can be accessed by academia, other national labs and the entirety of the supply chain.
By attracting, supporting and retaining diverse talent, we can maintain the skills and capabilities needed to deliver our commercial contracts and develop the next wave of innovators.
Establishing the Centre for Innovative Nuclear Decommissioning (CINDe)
In 2017, we set up our very own PhD Hub, the Centre for Innovative Nuclear Decommissioning (CINDe), in collaboration with Sellafield Ltd, the University of Manchester, Lancaster University, the University of Liverpool and the University of Cumbria.
Based at our Workington Laboratory in Cumbria, CINDe provides an opportunity for PhD researchers to work closely with our expert staff at NNL in supporting decommissioning operations in the nuclear industry, with a particular emphasis on the Sellafield Challenges. As of 2020, we have 17 multidisciplinary PhD researchers working from CINDe.
