Japan’s Nuclear Power Revival Threatened by Lack of Workers

(Bloomberg) -- The restart of the nuclear power plant closest to the epicenter of Japan’s devastating 2011 earthquake this week was hailed by the government as a major step toward reviving atomic energy. It’s also been a reminder of the crippling shortage of skilled workers that could slow that comeback.

Onagawa didn’t suffer the meltdown seen at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant, further down the coast. But no corner of the country’s nuclear industry was immune as public opinion soured on a technology that used to generate about a quarter of its electricity.

All of Japan’s reactors were subsequently shut. Restarting them has been a tortuous process, with around 60% of commercially available units still offline. The hiatus and slow revival has dramatically worsened a skills crunch visible across the nation’s nuclear industry.

At Onagawa, a power station near a small fishing port in northeastern Japan, more than a third of its technical staff have never operated a reactor before, and have practiced only on simulators. 

An emissions-free and stable source of electricity, nuclear power is undergoing a global renaissance as governments turn to it to meet decarbonization targets and tech companies look for clean energy for the artificial intelligence data center boom. The dearth of skilled workers in Japan is a threat to the industry’s growth. 

“Students were driven away from nuclear programs and managers with a great deal of ambition almost certainly looked for other opportunities” after 2011, said Mark Nelson, founder and managing director at Radiant Energy Group, a consultancy focused on the transition to cleaner fuels. If Japan can’t rely on atomic energy, it risks crimping the development and deployment of AI at scale, he said. 

Between 33% and 58% of operators at nuclear plants managed by seven Japanese utilities have had no prior experience running them, let alone dealing with an emergency, local newspaper Asahi Shimbun said in a study published in March. The Japan Electrical Manufacturers’ Association said the number of people working in the country’s wider atomic power industry dropped by more than a fifth from 2010 to 2023. 

Other nations are grappling with similar issues. France and the UK are facing difficulties hiring engineers for planned reactors. Taiwan, which will shut its last unit next year, is looking for ways to retain personnel from decommissioned plants so there’s a talent pool if the island decides to adopts next-generation reactors in the future.

Affordable and stable electricity “is the basis of people’s livelihood and business activities,” said Masakazu Tokura, the chairman of Japan’s biggest business lobby, Keidanren, in a statement on Tuesday. “We hope that Onagawa No. 2 will contribute to improving Japan’s energy self-sufficiency and achieving carbon neutrality.” 

At Onagawa, some 51 of 140 technical staff have no previous experience operating reactors, according to Tohoku Electric Power Co., which runs the plant. 

The utility said it had trained inexperienced staff on simulators, sent them to learn at thermal power plants and also assigned seasoned operators to provide them with support. Still, it acknowledged that on-the-job experience is “incredibly important” and that workers need first-hand knowledge of an operating reactor to detect problems.

Despite the lack of experienced staff, Onagawa, and places like it, are set to become training grounds for the next generation of Japanese nuclear workers. Toshiba Energy Systems and Solutions Corp., which was involved in the construction of the reactor and conducted the safety work needed for the restart, has been sending staff there.

“Experience on-site is different from inheriting skills face-to-face,” said Yuki Komukai, group manager at the company’s power systems division. “We are sending new recruits to Onagawa to get first-hand experience.”

The number of students studying in nuclear-related departments in Japanese higher education has been falling from a peak as far back as 1993, according to a white paper from the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, with the decline possibly exacerbated by the country’s aging population.

To help stoke interest in nuclear careers, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum started hosting job fairs in the mid-2000s, with almost 2,000 students attending events in Tokyo and Osaka in 2010. Interest plummeted after the Fukushima disaster though, and they’ve only attracted around 300 to 400 jobseekers since then, it said. 

With both the government and Keidanren pushing for the nuclear energy revival there are signs more young people are becoming more interested about careers in the industry, however. Sentiment toward nuclear is improving, said Toshiba’s Komukai.

Masato Suzuki, who is studying nuclear safety engineering at Tokyo City University, was one of the attendees at this year’s JAIF job fair in the Japanese capital. Just eight years old at the time of the Fukushima meltdown, he said he’d been interested in nuclear power since reading in a textbook about how much Japan relied on it before the disaster.  

“I’ve always thought it’s a waste to not use something that supported Japan for so long,” Suzuki said. “I want to work at a manufacturer and become a nuclear engineer in the future.” 

(Updates with comment from chairman of Japan’s biggest business lobby in 9th paragraph)

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