Nuclear - Cogent Skills

Introducing the Nuclear Skills Alliance

The Nuclear Skills Alliance brings together industry employers to deliver a unified and forward-looking strategy for the UK’s nuclear workforce. The Nuclear Skills Alliance is aligned to solve the sector’s most critical challenges: ensuring a skilled, resilient, and adaptable workforce to meet future demand.

Our purpose

The Nuclear Skills Alliance was established to:

Coordinate strategic action to tackle workforce and skills challenges across the nuclear lifecycle.
Deliver measurable impact by aligning national skills initiatives with employer needs.
Strengthen collaboration between industry, government, education, and training partners.

Our mission is to support the growth of a diverse, high-quality workforce that will enable the safe, secure, and efficient delivery of the UK’s nuclear ambitions—including new build, decommissioning, and clean energy transition.

What we deliver

The Nuclear Skills Alliance leads coordinated action across eight strategic priorities, delivering impact across the entire nuclear skills landscape:

Sector Perspective

Identifying and articulating long-term nuclear workforce needs—supporting national planning, such as the Nuclear Skills Plan [LINK] and investment decisions through updated forecasts and targeted analysis, as well as covering gaps within the sector that aren’t yet covered under specific national plans.

Cross-Sector Skills

Building connections with adjacent sectors like clean energy and hydrogen, developing shared curricula and exploring pathways for talent transfer to increase flexibility and resilience.

Policy & Horizon Scanning

Monitoring skills and education policies across the UK, conduct horizon scanning, and provide regular briefings to help the sector respond proactively to external change.

Strategic Standards Planning

Through the Nuclear Vocational Expert Group [LINK], identify current and future skills standards needed for the nuclear sector, considering technological advancements, regulatory requirements, and evolving job roles, and engage with stakeholders to define and refresh training standards, apprenticeship standards and role profiles to ensure quality, consistency, and future-readiness in nuclear skills delivery.

The Next Generation

Coordinating a collaborative approach to national STEM outreach, supporting the development of careers resources, and engage with education institutions—helping to attract and inspire young people to pursue nuclear career pathways and enhance sector reputation as a long-term employer.

Higher Level Skills

Through analysis of current and future demand in higher-level skills, the Nuclear Skills Alliance aims to identify demand for advanced technical and subject matter expertise—ensuring the UK maintains its innovation and leadership in nuclear science and engineering. By strengthening engagement with Universities, the Nuclear Skills Alliance aims to ensure relevant higher education programmes are available for the strategically important niche areas of nuclear.

Supply Chain Representation

The Nuclear Skills Alliance supports SMEs and suppliers through tailored skills initiatives and ensure their voices are included in national workforce planning, especially through the NSAN Employer forum and [LINK] regional skills hubs.

International Co-operation

Building collaboration with global nuclear leaders to share best practices, benchmark training standards, and explore international mobility and joint training opportunities.

Employers leading change in Nuclear

Employers that are actively part of the Nuclear Skills Alliance include:

The Nuclear Skills Alliance is chaired by:

John Male

Office Nuclear Regulation

Guided by Evidence, Backed by Industry

The Nuclear Skills Alliance activities are guided by labour market intelligence, including the Nuclear Workforce Assessment [LINK] and funded through employer contributions. With a focus on collaboration—not duplication—the Partnership works in alignment with the UK’s Nuclear Skills Plan [LINK], ensuring every effort contributes to a skilled and sustainable workforce pipeline.

Cogent Skills and the Nuclear Skills Alliance

Cogent Skills supports the Nuclear Skills Alliance through collaboration and delivery as passionate advocates of skills, providing the once-voice to the sector and government on behalf of the Nuclear Skills Alliance.

Cogent Skills ensure Science & Technology employers have the skills needed for success. Harnessing the power of collaboration, we enable sector-based employers to identify, articulate and address their shared skills challenges to create a safe, inclusive, productive, future-ready workforce.

The Cogent Skills Charity supports employers to work together collectively to achieve skills outcomes and impacts that are more than can be achieved individually - addressing issues where a ‘whole industry’ approach is required often due to market failure.

Skills support for your workforce

If you want to transform the skills in your workforce, invest in your employees’ personal development or drive up standards across our industry, get in touch today to find out how we can help.

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