With nuclear power firmly back on the Government’s energy agenda, the number of students on MSc courses in the physics and technology of nuclear reactors is booming.

This year the UK’s most longestablished programme — an MSc in the physics and technology of nuclear reactors at Birmingham University — has the highest number of students in the course’s 52-year history.

This autumn more than 40 students enrolled on the programme, which was originally established three weeks before the opening of the UK’s first nuclear power station, Calder Hall, in 1956. Nearly 600 students have graduated from the course over the past half century.

Numbers on the more recent Nuclear Technology Education Consortium (NTEC) nuclear science and technology MSc have also doubled this year to more than 30. “Students see it as an industry that has a future,” says Dr Paul Norman of Birmingham University’s physics and technology of nuclear reactors department.

Not many universities have the expertise and skills to teach in this field. It was partly for this reason that the NTEC consortium was created four years ago to draw on the scattered expertise that did exist in academe to offer a new MSc degree in nuclear energy via a consortium of 11 universities and specialist providers. Dr Andy Clarke, NTEC’s manager of nuclear postgraduate programmes, says that a few years ago, little nuclear training or education was offered in the UK. “The idea of NTEC was to draw all those different pockets of knowledge into one body, which could deliver a course that exploits those areas of expertise.”

Students register at Manchester, Liverpool or Sheffield universities but travel around the UK to be taught different week-long modules by members of the 11-strong consortium, which includes Imperial College and Leeds, Lancaster and City universities. Students must study eight modules from a possible 21. This includes reactor physics, decommissioning, the nuclear fuel cycle, risk management and safety management.

Students enter the course from disciplines, such as physics, computer sciences, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and material sciences.

Graduates from the course are snapped up by the major power generating companies. Fees for the course are £13,125 (this includes travel costs), although the research councils will fund some students. The course can be studied full time in one year, part time over three years, or some of the modules can be taken by distance learning.

The Birmingham University MSc — fees are £4,200 — is taught through a mix of laboratory work, lectures and visits to nuclear sites.

CASE STUDY

Gareth Thomas works as a graduate engineer with British Energy, which owns and runs eight nuclear power stations in the UK. He will spend his first 18 months at different locations carrying out a range of physics and engineering activities.

Thomas, 24, this year completed an MSc in nuclear science and technology delivered by the Nuclear Technology Education Consortium, a group of 11 universities and research institutions in the UK. The qualification was awarded by Manchester University, where he had previously gained a masters in physics.

Thomas spent much of the past year travelling around the country being taught different aspects of nuclear power generation, waste management and decommissioning by academics at Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.

He also spent three months on an industry placement, working for Rolls-Royce in Derby on a civil nuclear engineering project.

Thomas says: “The teachers are always trying to relate their teaching to the industry and what is going on at the moment. It was very well organised, considering the logistics.”