6/7

Social Impact

While NNL’s contribution to UK output is captured through GVA, employment and wider economic impacts, these measures do not capture the additional societal impacts NNL has on the communities it interacts with. These additional contributions by NNL to society include the promotion of equality, diversity and inclusion, STEM outreach programmes, and specific contributions in the medical field as well as to security and non-proliferation.

30%

The % of women in the workforce which has been increasing for the fourth consecutive year

40%

The % of women in board positions

281,173

Pupils reached through the Developing Exports Program

Community

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I)

As stated in its ED&I Strategy, diversity is paramount to NNL’s vision to deliver world-leading nuclear expertise and innovative solutions. ED&I is sponsored by NNL’s executive board, which has overall responsibility for oversight of the strategy, with support from a steering board that helps guide and steer the programme’s direction. ED&I’s steering board has four Executive Leadership Team (ELT) members who represent the programme at meetings. There are also senior leaders from each business area to champion ED&I and to guide the programme, ensuring that it is fit for purpose across the firm.

NNLs ED&I strategy is delivered through six workstreams made up of those passionate about diversity and those responsible for business-as-usual delivery in the relevant areas to ensure that ED&I is a golden thread not an ad hoc add on.

Three of the workstreams are drivers, which help define and realise NNL’s ED&I goals:

  • Attraction: Focused on attracting a diverse workforce. This workstream covers, NNL’s ED&I’s outreach strategy, the whole recruitment process, early careers recruitment programmes and ensuring that the schools with the biggest diversity of pupils are targeted and that the advertising process is inclusive. It also aims to ensure that NNL’s external facing presence is ED&I friendly.
  • Belonging: This workstream ensures the workplace culture at NNL is inclusive and covers the internal initiatives aimed at supporting this – from policy updates to blogs, talks, activities and quizzes and the maintenance of the internal ED&I site.
  • Career Support: This workstream ensures promotion processes are as transparent as possible, that there are clear pathways for progression and that everyone at NNL has sufficient support via learning and development and mentoring activities to perform to their best.

The three other workstreams are enablers, as they provide support and underpinning activities to facilitate implementation:

  • Data and Metrics: This workstream provides accurate and up-to-date data to underpin NNL’s strategy. It does this by ensuring NNL collects the necessary facts and data in an ethical way and produces regular dashboards as well as an internal annual data report and the legally mandated Gender Pay Gap report.
  • Engagement: Focuses on how NNL learns from, works with and influences other organisations to drive ED&I in the nuclear sector.
  • Feedback: This workstream focuses on having the correct mechanisms in place for receiving feedback, with site representatives that provide a local focal point to provide feedback to the workstream leads and to lead initiatives within each site with the help of our ED&I Ambassadors – passionate people from across the business.

NNL has made progress in advocacy for gender equality within the workforce. Women make up an increasing proportion of NNL’s workforce, rising consistently from approximately 26% in 2018 to 30% in 2022 across all employees. The figure is moving closer to the Nuclear Sector Deal target of 40% by 2030. Broken down in terms of those in the STEM areas of the business and those who are not, there are roughly equal numbers of men and women (53%) in non-STEM roles. However, the STEM workforce is less representative with only 24% of it made up of women. At a board level, 40% of board members are women, and 33% of non-executive directors (NEDs) are women.

STEM Outreach and School Programmes

NNL contributes to local communities through its investment in promoting STEM career paths. NNL recognises that STEM career paths are not well understood amongst the general public, and that schools and colleges are increasingly requesting support from STEM organisations to enrich their curriculum. There is a predicted shortage of 20,000 STEM educated persons within the UK labour market, while it is estimated that the nuclear sector will require over 6,000 additional STEM resources over the next 10 years, and over 300 STEM SMEs (subject matter experts) over the next 5-10 years.

NNL’s STEM outreach strategy focuses on delivering measurable, tangible improvements to the understanding of nuclear energy and radionuclear applications to young people. This is aligned to NNL’s 10-year business plan strategy to achieve success through the attraction, retention and engagement of a talented and diverse workforce. As part of its STEM Outreach Strategy, NNL has contributed to Developing Experts, an online education platform providing science lessons from universities and industry to pupils in primary school, as well as years 7-9 in secondary school. In the first half of term one of the 2022/23 school year, Developing Experts reached 6,620 schools, 281,173 pupils, 26,937 teachers and 10,314 tutors.

Medical Science and Non-Proliferation

Medical Science

Nuclear science plays an important role in the medical field. In particular, radioisotopes are being used to diagnose and treat health conditions including many types of cancer, heart disease and thyroid disease, and for the early detection and assessment of brain disorders such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. One in two UK citizens will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime and may see the efficacy of their treatments and the quality of their life enhanced by nuclear medicine. Furthermore, global demand for radioisotope treatments is increasing at a rate of up to 5% every year, while every hospital in the UK uses them on a daily basis. However, the supply of such radioisotopes faces a global shortage.

Therefore, building on its world-leading capability in the area of complex chemical separation and purification of nuclear material, NNL has taken on the challenge to produce radioisotopes needed to develop new medical treatments. Harvesting radioisotopes from existing nuclear material is a proven approach to providing the necessary supply to medical clinicians and researchers. NNL has already developed several new radioisotope production routes and has started development work to build this as a capability for the UK, with a view to progressing to a sustainable route to allow the regular provision of radioisotopes. NNL plans to develop a facility within one of its existing, nuclear-licensed laboratories, thus also creating new long-term and high-quality employment within the North West.

Case Study: Lead-212

In the summer of 2022 NNL made a significant breakthrough in producing Lead-212, which is an important medical radioisotope for treating cancer directly to the cells (thus limiting side effects), but which is difficult to produce and therefore in short supply. The production process NNL has developed at Preston requires complex chemical separation and purification of nuclear material, building on its world-leading capability in this area. Looking ahead, NNL will continue to work closely with clinicians and academics including at Queen Mary University of London and King’s College London and their associated nuclear medicine departments at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust to deliver this important work.

Non-proliferation

Beyond its specialist expertise across the fuel cycle, NNL has decades of experience in managing national infrastructure capable of handling some of the most challenging nuclear material in the world. This combination of capabilities allows NNL to not only ensure the security of its own infrastructure, but to also benefit the UK government and its intergovernmental partners.

NNL is enabling the peaceful use of nuclear technologies, including the development and use of new small and advanced reactors. As their use increases globally, so will demand for NNL’s expertise. To support this, NNL will invest in its knowledge base and talent. In step with the government’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, Global Britain in a Competitive Age, NNL is placing targeted investments in core science, innovation and research programmes to help sustain the UK’s strategic advantage.

As part of its contribution, NNL has led a national team effort on behalf of the government to provide a structured programme of voluntary support and expertise to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA is the world’s centre for cooperation in the nuclear field, promoting the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technology. It provides independent verification to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. NNL has supported the IAEA by enabling its personnel to be trained at the laboratory’s unique, nuclear-licensed sites, as well as by providing analysis of samples taken during inspections and access to world-leading fuel cycle expertise. Thanks to its contribution, in 2020 NNL was the first ever UK institution to be designated as a Collaborating Centre by the IAEA.

Case Study: Central Laboratory

The Central Laboratory is key to the UK’s plutonium stewardship programme. To permit these operations, the facility underwent a programme of security enhancements, and a Nuclear Site Security Plan submission to meet the Office for Nuclear Regulation’s (ONR) new Security Assessment Principles (SyAPs). This framework represented a shift to an outcome-based regulation model, with greater reliance on site operators to internally assess and assure that they meet the required performance.

To successfully deliver the new Nuclear Site Security Plans, NNL engaged with a broad range of stakeholders including Sellafield Ltd, duty holders, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary and ONR. As a lasting impact at Central Laboratory, NNL has incorporated the experience into the engineering design phase of the Replacement Analytical Project (RAP), a new facility that will see the laboratory become the home of essential analytical services towards the operation of Sellafield and delivery of its legacy waste management mission. This early integration will deliver against the principle of secure by design, a shift in approach which ensures security and regulatory requirements are built in from the start.