China and the Nuclear Work Force

We've written more than a few times about the challenge the American nuclear industry faces in terms of the nuclear workforce. And, as it turns out, China faces some of the same challenges too:

China's plans to develop its nuclear power industry faces a major hurdle: a shortage of personnel, a top nuclear expert says.

"The number of current staff is far below the demand of the nuclear industry, especially the nuclear power industry," said Kang Rixin, general manager of China National Nuclear Corp., according to a report in the official Xinhua news agency Sunday.

Asia's second-largest economy needs energy to feed its rapidly growing markets and as part of this effort, Beijing is seeking to diversify its sources of energy. It plans to expand installed nuclear power generating capacity to 40m kW by 2020, up from 8.7m kW now.

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Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy Environment, Energy, Technology, Nuclear Engineering, China