attrition rate in the technician pool over the three-year period from autumn 2018 to 2021 was still revealed at the 2024 Information System on Occupational Exposure ALARA Symposium. It was further emphasised that one-third of active senior RPTs are nearing retirement. While the trend is less noticeable in the United Kingdom and Europe, it remains crucial to remain proactive to ensure safe completion of work and prevent delays caused by a shortage of skilled personnel, especially during outages or as the nuclear industry expands again.
Senior Health Physics Monitors are not entrylevel positions. As you can imagine, the solution is not simply to address the shortage by expedited entry-level hiring and rapid expansion of the trainee pool. The trainee pool needs to increase incrementally so that on-the-job training and mentorship can continue, with well-rounded, experienced HPMs serving as mentors. The catch-22 is that many utilities want only senior-level resources, which are particularly scarce. As an industry, we need to identify more tasks that junior resources can perform without risk to personnel or plant, creating more entry-level positions. Simulated training equipment is often used primarily for highhazard work, but it can also be expanded to include basic training to prepare future monitors for anticipated and unexpected situations. Many of today ' s simulated training systems can provide unbiased evaluations.
One benefit of a highly regulated and international industry, such as nuclear, is that, despite national differences, many rules and limits are based on collaboration and recommendations from organisations such as ICRP and IAEA. Therefore, it is possible to standardise and establish equivalencies across many of those training modules to build a more mobile staffing pool.
As the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome. In my experience working at various nuclear facilities across multiple countries, I have found many ways to achieve the same goal. At every new site, I am presented with a new opportunity to learn and identify best practices I can“ borrow” for my next assignment. I have found a growing need to enhance collaboration by sharing resources and experiences. This exchange is crucial not only for managing peak demand but also for preventing complacency and fostering continuous learning.
My position in NUVIA requires me to provide radiation protection services across multiple markets, both domestic and international.
This has identified both challenges and opportunities to strengthen the competencies of the HPM pool. For example, skilled HPMs from the United Kingdom have supported outages in Canada, the USA, and Slovenia, and outages in the UK have received reciprocal support during peak periods.
The ability to combine so many projects has fostered collaboration and knowledge exchange while easing peaks for many years. One of the challenges is that training varies significantly between markets and, in some cases, there are even multiple standards within a country. In some situations, there is no established bridging, which has led highly skilled HPMs to complete extensive training and testing, primarily to demonstrate knowledge they already possess rather than to gain new knowledge. This slows down the deployment of already scarce resources.
It ' s time for the next step Let us, as an industry, work towards a core international training standard or its equivalent, broaden resource exchange to include additional international partners, and involve utilities ' in-house teams in these exchanges.
Radiation Protection Today Summer 2026 15