Education and training to support Canadian nuclear workforce development

Recently, Ontario Power Generation’s license to construct application was approved by IESO for the Darlington New Nuclear Project—North America’s first deployment of small modular reactors, consisting of four GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy BWRX-300 units. Further, Ontario has asked OPG to assess three new candidate sites, including the potential deployment of a new station in the village of Wesleyville, with a capacity of up to 10,000 MWe.

Bruce Power is considering the expansion of the Bruce nuclear power plant by up to an additional 4,800 MWe. Moreover, several other provinces are looking to deploy new nuclear power plants to replace coal stations and meet growing electricity demands. Saskatchewan is considering deploying four BWRX-300 units, and Alberta is currently engaging the public on a potential 4,800-MWe plant.

Lastly, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization recently announced a location for a deep geological repository for permanent disposal of used nuclear fuel and is currently preparing a project description, which is the start of the official assessment process.

There is tremendous growth anticipated in the Canadian nuclear sector in a relatively short period of time, which will require a commensurately large growth in its workforce. This workforce will comprise engineers, scientists, skilled trades, human resources, commerce, and professionals from other disciplines. Colleges and universities have a role to play in providing post-secondary education of this evolving workforce.

Similarly, there’s an important role to be played in upskilling and reskilling professionals from other sectors (e.g., automotive) into the nuclear sector. The University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering (UNENE) specializes in this role within Canada. This article provides a high-level overview of the roles and challenges that universities and the UNENE have in Canada in supporting the industry’s growing workforce development needs. The role that Canadian colleges and polytechnics have in the training of skilled trades is an important one—but it is just out of the scope of this article.

The role of universities

The nuclear industry hires graduates from a plethora of backgrounds. Within engineering, this includes the traditional disciplines (e.g., mechanical, civil, electrical) in addition to specialized disciplines, namely nuclear engineering. Currently, there is only one university in Canada that has a dedicated undergraduate nuclear engineering program: Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, Ontario. There are several other universities, including Western University, University of Toronto, École Polytechnique de Montreal, and Queen’s University, that offer nuclear engineering courses, certificates, streams, or minors at the undergraduate level where the level of nuclear knowledge and skill development varies considerably.

Given the anticipated growth in the sector, several universities are working on developing new nuclear educational programs. Ontario Tech has developed a new nuclear engineering minor that launched this fall. McMaster University is also launching a nuclear minor with three streams: nuclear engineering, nuclear medicine, and social studies. Similar developments are anticipated in other provinces, including Saskatchewan and Alberta, to supply local talent to their workforces.

The development of new nuclear educational programs at McMaster is based on an extensive campaign where industry stakeholders were interviewed to better understand their hiring needs. High-level feedback of attributes desired in new hires is summarized below:

Not just book smart, but also street smart.

Not just hard skills, but also soft skills.

Not just engineers, but many other disciplines.

Regarding the first point, industry stakeholders emphasized the value of practical skills in engineers to complement theoretical knowledge. This includes hands-on skills that can be developed through experimental labs and applications of codes, standards, and regulatory documents to engineering analyses.

Regarding the second point, many stakeholders emphasized the importance of having effective soft skills, including communication, teamwork, problem solving, and time management. Similarly, the value of having a knowledge base on nontechnical matters has been made clear, such as awareness of matters important to Indigenous communities, human performance, safety culture, and so forth.

Regarding the third point, it is important to remember that the nuclear industry does not hire just engineers but myriad professionals and skilled tradespeople. For many of these workforce streams, there is value in students and employees having some working-level knowledge of the nuclear sector prior to joining the workforce.

The role of UNENE

The University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering was founded in 2002 as a nonprofit corporation. This network of Canadian and partner international universities offers nuclear engineering, science, and technology research and education programming. Its members also include Canadian nuclear utilities, technical and nuclear service providers, Canada’s national nuclear science and technology institution, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, plus 13 domestic universities and one international university. With its partners and funding organizations, UNENE works to advance nuclear knowledge; build capacity and heighten the visibility of Canada’s strength as a global partner; and elevate the role of nuclear in advancing global sustainability, prosperity, and a clean energy future.

These are the overarching objectives of UNENE:

To support, fund, and direct nuclear research and education in universities to address industry needs.

To supply a feedstock of highly qualified personnel (HQP).

To coordinate and facilitate information exchange to enable universities and industry to collaborate.

To create a respected pool of university-based expertise for independent advice.

Through five of its core university education delivery members—McMaster, Ontario Tech, Queens, Waterloo, and Western—UNENE delivers two graduate education programs: M.Eng., a master’s degree in nuclear engineering; and a graduate diploma in nuclear engineering and technology. The intake and enrollment in these two academic programs are at an all-time high—in excess of 70 students in 2025, coinciding with the growing demand for nuclear professionals in the Canadian nuclear industry. This recent demand is driven by a combination of industry staff attrition and retirements, nuclear plant refurbishments and projects, and new nuclear buildouts (both proposed and committed).

In addition, UNENE has developed a portfolio of technical short courses to address many of the nuclear foundational topics and nuclear engineering fundamental subjects. These serve as professional development and continuing education courses for UNENE certificate (nonacademic) credit. These technical short courses together as a suite provide excellent introductory “nuclearization” training and upskilling programs for prospective newcomers and nonnuclear engineers and scientists with undergraduate degrees looking to enter the nuclear industry (whether recent graduates or midcareer professionals). Further work is underway to expand the scope of course subjects in the portfolio and establish the full microcredentials program of stackable course credits and mini-program certifications.

Challenges, uncertainties, and risks

While there will be an enormous demand in the workforce, it is not yet certain how many, what distribution, and when that workforce will be needed. The supply of talent will need to be aligned with the demand. Given that the demand is not yet certain, the ability to supply talent is not yet certain. The Canadian Nuclear Association is currently conducting a workforce demand projection document that is intended to help determine these targets.

There are constraints applied to the universities that introduce some further challenges to expanding educational programming. First, the provinces provide matching funds for domestic students that are capped for different programs at different universities. Thus, the ability to expand enrollment at the university level is largely constrained by the province. However, UNENE has some increased flexibility in its programming as a small, private, nonprofit entity. Scalability of program offerings, class and course scheduling, instructor hiring arising from increased demand, and class sizes are more easily accommodated due to UNENE’s nimbleness and simpler infrastructure.

As previously stated, there are several universities already offering some level of nuclear education in some provinces, in which graduation rates are expected to expand. On the other hand, there are universities in different provinces looking to create new nuclear educational programming from scratch. This will be a challenging path. There may be opportunities for different universities to collaborate with one another and UNENE. As a result of this university framework, a lot of planning and long lead times are required to deploy new educational programs, which can introduce some risk to timing.

Technology support is another challenge. To date, only CANDU pressurized reactors have been operating in Canada, which has resulted in a comprehensive network of expertise in CANDU technology. Recently, OPG initiated the construction phase of the first boiling water reactor in the country, a BWRX-300 to be sited in Ontario. While BWRs are mature technologies, they are new to Canada and thus require development of a workforce competent in BWR operation, thereby adding another challenge.

Outlook

The large, anticipated growth in the nuclear sector in Canada is clear. An effective strategy for supplying a workforce to support this growth, however, is not yet clear. Universities and colleges provide the baseload of workforce supply, which is expected to continue. UNENE and internal training programs at companies provide the education and training up to that base level of university education to make an individual job-ready.

As it stands, Canadian universities are largely operating in silos, engaging individually with stakeholders in industry—but not in a coordinated fashion. There is a need to coordinate at an interinstitutional level as part of a national workforce development strategy.

UNENE, along with Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, Canada’s premier nuclear science and technology laboratory, and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Canada’s Crown nuclear corporation, announced in June 2025 the signing of a memorandum of understanding to pursue the development of the Canadian Nuclear Learning Centre (CNLC). The vision of the center is to coordinate education, training, knowledge management, and workforce development across Canada’s growing nuclear sector.

Collaboratively, the three organizations will undertake to establish the CNLC. These activities include expanding UNENE programming and activities to incorporate the use of the world-class facilities and expertise at Chalk River Laboratories and other CNL sites while exploring both the development of microcredential offerings and the opportunity for regional hubs via academic and other national laboratory partners.

Central to the collaboration is the advancement of nuclear education to support workforce development priorities. Each organization will also look to leverage its long-term relationships with Canadian academic institutions to examine opportunities for further joint project coordination and integration. This CNLC concept offers itself as an operative tool, catalyst, and support avenue for the implementation of a potential national nuclear workforce strategy and pipeline. Coordinating and harnessing the many sources and streams of nuclear education and upskilling/reskilling efforts in the Canadian landscape could be of great benefit in meeting the nuclear workforce challenge ahead.

Markus Piro is an associate professor in nuclear engineering and the director of the minor in nuclear studies and society at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Allan Lew is the director of operations and research at the University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering.