NESTet 2026 invites contributions for oral and poster presentations highlighting best practices, experiences, and initiatives across the nuclear community to strengthen workforce attraction, development, and retention. These include:

• Evolving workforce needs across the sector
  • End-user needs, also in view of the acceleration of SMR development, LTO programmes, decommissioning, fusion roadmaps and R&D activities. What qualifications—academic, vocational, and CPD—will be required in the coming decade? How to efficiently build and maintain an adequate workforce in countries with emerging and phasing out nuclear capacities?
• Success stories in attracting, developing, and retaining talent
  • Approaches to attract and retain workforce at all levels; taking into account challenges and opportunities like cross-sector mobility and competition for skills, digitalisation, AI, flexible working, changing expectations of young professionals.
• Capacity building: skills, competences, qualifications
  • How do we define, develop and certify competences in view of growing complexity of roles across the nuclear lifecycle (from new builds to final repository implementation). How can we connect stakeholders seeking skilled talent with those developing and delivering the necessary education and training?
  • How to validate and recognise across national borders those skills that are acquired on the job, through vocational training or non-traditional learning pathways, ensuring effective knowledge transfer between generations
• Leadership development
  • Qualifications and competences leaders will need in the evolving nuclear sector, with particular attention to skills for complex nuclear projects across the lifecycle and intergenerational fairness in succession planning.
• Best practices in nuclear education and training
  • Benchmarking new learning formats, hybrid delivery, and international virtual collaboration.
• Innovative pedagogical tools and methods
  • Tools enabling personalised learning, realistic practice scenarios, and interactive experiences—such as AI tutors, advanced simulations, and immersive XR/VR environments
• AI for learning, teaching, and student assessment
  • How is the rapidly evolving technology embraced (or resisted) by students, schools, universities, and training providers.
• International networking and collaboration
  • Strengthening cooperation and mobility to sustain competencies in a changing geopolitical environment.
  • Communities of practice connecting nuclear sector professionals and training providers, aiming at shaping the international talent pool for nuclear sectors.

• Vocational training pathways for technical and operational roles
  • Including targeted vocational profiles for the expansion of advanced technologies like SMRs and others, dismantling projects, and final disposal.
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) frameworks and micro-credentials
  • Supporting lifelong learning with modular, stackable, and digital formats.
  • Validating and recognising learning and competences acquired in formal, non-formal and informal contexts.

Target public

• Nuclear sector professionals: HR managers, workforce planners, training coordinators, project managers, and technical leads from utilities, SMR developers, advanced reactor companies, decommissioning organizations, and other nuclear end-users.
• Training providers: Vocational schools, technical training centres, professional development organisations, and companies offering CPD or modular training programmes.
• Academia: University faculties, curriculum designers, and researchers in nuclear engineering, project management, digitalisation, safety, and related disciplines.
• Policy and regulatory bodies: Representatives interested in workforce planning, licensing, and cross-sector competence standards.
• International organisations and networks: Groups promoting nuclear collaboration, knowledge transfer, and workforce mobility.

DEADLINE EXTENDED – Mark your diaries and be a part of it! Upload your abstracts before 14 November 2025.

For abstract submission, please go to the NESTet 2026 Online Abstract Submission System