In 2025 “People’’ became the primary focus – nuclear projects and startups are clearly investible now, evidenced by the scale of investment from familiar and new investors, so this was the year that the question became “ok, we are going to do this, so where will we find the people to make this vision a reality?’’

Agile hybrid team structures at the national and global level were in full effect in 2025 – as the workload has ramped up, this is the year that organizations in the nuclear sector really started to stretch the capacity and capability of teams working over broad time zones and locations. 2025 was a year of optimizing current skills capacity.

Attrition through retirement across OECD countries was really noticeable in 2025, especially at the senior leadership and subject matter expert levels. Underinvestment in knowledge transfer has left gaps and fortunately many senior people continue to work after retirement as consultants to close this deficit of knowledge transfer.

A changing lens on Inclusion matters in 2025 has led to a slowing in progress across most countries. While there is widespread support for a fair, equitable and psychologically safe working environment for everyone, interpretation around translating that into policy and investment differs significantly across countries and employers.

Three predictions for 2026…

Employers will face hard decisions in 2026 around working locations and flexibility. Defining policies and practices that satisfy both employee needs for flexibility and employer needs for collaboration and knowledge sharing, in a way that works for all, is a challenge. Some roles allow for more flexibility than others, but the sense of fairness and equal consideration across all job functions is a real concern for employees in the nuclear sector. One solution is to create working locations where the skills are, and where people want to be, so we will see “competence centers’’ appear rapidly in new locations across the globe in 2026.

Organizations in the nuclear sector are understandably cautious about scaling up in advance of major investment decisions. This is not the first time we have prepared for a nuclear energy renaissance! We see 2026 as a tipping point, when the stretching of internal capabilities reach their limits and there is a large scale need to hire and develop additional people. There will be a lot of competition for hiring and employers looking to achieve competitive advantage by hiring and retaining the best people will need razor-sharp talent acquisition strategies and partners.

Finally, we see a step change in creativity around how we employ and engage people with rare skills. A general skills shortage, increased retirements and years of consolidation in the supply chain means that there are no guaranteed “go to’’ options for rare skill sets. Breaking objectives and deliverables down into scopes of work that can be delivered by people working on a self-employed basis, in person or remotely, will become even more commonplace in 2026. Job sharing, part time working, secondments and everything else that efficiently bring skills to where they are needed will be on the rise.

All in all, an exciting prospect awaits in 2026. Here at Thomas Thor, we look forward to supporting the leading employers across the globe in delivering on the ambitions and potential ahead of us.