“Crack down on preconceived ideas about the industry.“This is the objective of the” business class “organized for two and a half days at Orano Melox on the Marcoule site.” _Young people have no idea what the industry looks like_explains Erika-Jeanne Ascencio, project manager at UIMM (Union of Metallurgy Industries and Trades) Occitanie who helped set up the operation for Industry Week. They have a lot of received ideas such as, for example, that the industry is dirty, it’s toxic or that it’s assembly-line work. The “corporate class” is really immersion in the industrial field. Let them discover the industry and its trades.“For two days, fifteen students of the third vocational preparation of the Sainte-Marie vocational school in Bagnols-sur-Cèze therefore followed their usual courses within Orano Melox, while meeting the employees.
Take students out of school
Dominique Saget is the director of the Lycée Sainte-Marie. It has been 10 years since this private establishment forged a partnership with Orano Melox to offer work-study BTS related to nuclear power. He is delighted with this new experience. “It takes the students out of their school environment. All the teachers played the game. The English course, for example, made it possible to show that English you had to speak and not just write, because the objective is to make yourself understood. It gives a new image to the professional path. It also allows us to show them why we are demanding on interpersonal skills. They understand why there are rules when it comes to finding a job. Today, there are a lot of unfilled jobs, it is important from the third year to motivate students to study.“
“What we have seen may encourage me to find my way”
These two days spent inside a nuclear site impressed the students. They all note the high level of security that surrounds it. “It’s because of the plutonium explains Alissa. We were told that with that, we could make bombs, that when they had plutonium delivered, there was even the gendarmerie behind. ! “The math class therefore focused on the manufacture of MOX, the nuclear fuel produced by Melox.”They were able to see, afterwards, a pellet and a piece of life-size pencil, it allowed them to understand what was happening in a reactor “. An immersion that excited Alissa. “Just being in high school isn’t real life. _When we see people at work, it gives us another point of view on life_. I told my mother: what we saw might show me where I want to go.”
200 work-study students welcomed each year in the Orano group in the South-East
This is precisely what Bruno Girard, the director of employment and training at Orano for the South East, hopes. “Our young people are a little lost, finding one’s orientation is not easy. I hope that this immersion will create vocations. To integrate Orano, there is a sector of excellence which is the work-study program. We welcome 200 work-study students every year in the South-East. JI think nuclear power has a bright future ahead of it. For young people, it’s showing them that there are prospects and jobs near them.“An operation that is all the more important as the sector has struggled to recruit since the health crisis.”We are forced to multiply our ways of doing things to seek out talents that are not necessarily in our territory. To take examples, maintenance, radio protection, sanitation, dismantling, these are jobs where volunteers are welcome.”