Europe’s energy transition is accelerating on every front: renewables scaling, hydrogen gaining traction, grids becoming smarter and more flexible. But beneath the policy pushes and new technologies, a quieter tension is building: the region doesn’t have enough skilled people to deliver the transition it has committed to.
And nowhere is that pressure more visible than in nuclear.
Currently, Europe’s nuclear sector is preparing for technologies that look nothing like those earlier plants: SMRs, advanced fuels, passive-safety designs, fusion concepts and AI-assisted operations. The skills required are diverging faster than training pipelines can adapt.
This is the backdrop against which SNETP is positioning itself, as one of the few European bodies capable of stitching together the ecosystem needed to rebuild nuclear talent at scale. The platform brings together industry, research bodies, academic institutions, policymakers, and emerging innovators such as Newcleo, Hexana, and Thorizon. Its mandate is explicitly long-term: ensure Europe’s human capital grows in step with its nuclear ambitions.
Brussels has been warning of a structural skills shortage for years. The European Commission estimates that millions of clean-energy jobs could be created by 2030, but a significant share may never materialize without targeted reskilling and workforce planning. Nuclear simply feels the pressure more intensely because of its safety-critical nature and its aging workforce profile.
Without strategic intervention, Europe risks stalling nuclear innovation, slowing deployment timelines, and undermining core security-of-supply goals.
SNETP’s Role: Linking Innovation to Talent Development
SNETP’s influence is felt through the way it ties research, innovation, and human capital together. Its work within key EU structures such as the SET-Plan Skills Task Forces and its role on the advisory board of EHRO-N (the European Human Resources Observatory for the Nuclear Sector) give it visibility into the evolving competency needs of utilities, research labs, regulators and vendors.
These priorities increasingly shape SNETP’s own events.
The 2024 Forum in Rome carved out space to highlight young innovators, and next year’s FISA-EURADWASTE-Forum SNETP 2025 will put the next-generation workforce and nuclear innovation at the centre of discussions.
One of the most concrete responses to the talent gap is Skills4Nuclear (S4N), funded through the Euratom programme. S4N is Europe’s first attempt to create a unified, cross-border framework for understanding workforce needs in nuclear and coordinating how the region attracts, trains and reskills people.
Its remit includes:
- establishing a European Forum for Nuclear Workforce and Skills
- mapping emerging skills gaps
- designing a European Nuclear Skills Strategy
- piloting reskilling models (including a first test case in Poland)
- developing campaigns to raise the visibility of nuclear careers, especially for youth and women
The intention is clear: ensure workers from declining sectors such as fossil fuels, can transition into nuclear roles and that Europe’s clean-energy workforce does not become a bottleneck in its climate strategy.
SNETP is a direct partner in S4N, but its influence extends into a broader portfolio of Euratom research projects- EASI-SMR, METIS, El-Peacetolero and LLMS4EU. These initiatives advance cutting-edge technologies and, crucially, generate the knowledge, tools, and methods that bolster the competence and agility of the future workforce.
Europe’s nuclear sector is not just managing a technology challenge, it is navigating a human-capital transition as significant as its engineering ambitions. If Europe wants nuclear to play a central role in a clean, secure, and resilient energy system, it must build a workforce capable of running the plants, designing the reactors, regulating the systems, and driving the innovations still on the horizon.
