The minimum essential activities which must be performed by a country itself are:

• Procurement of uranium, uranium conversion and enrichment and fuel fabrication, involving 4-6 persons.

• Fuel management at the power plant and disposal of spent fuel. It is usually the responsibility of the owner of the nuclear power plant to carry out these tasks.

• Waste management: without reprocessing, the back-end activities will possibly require 100-200 people.

If additional fuel cycle activities are taken up in the country, such as uranium exploration and production, or fuel element fabrication, specific organiza­tions and the corresponding manpower will be required to carry out the tasks.

At the end of the plant life and for decommissioning purposes, including decontamination, dismantling, asset recovery, waste processing, storage and disposal, around 500-1000 staff will be necessary.

An example of the overall manpower requirements during the different stages of a nuclear power project is illustrated in Fig. 6.1 adapted from

IAEA (1980). The data do not include resources for equipment and com­ponent manufacturing.

During the pre-project and early implementation phases, a relatively small number of highly qualified professionals are needed. The require­ments start to substantially increase when commitments are made (letter of intent, contract) to install the plant. The activities which have by far the largest manpower requirements are manufacturing and construction.