Nuclear technology is multidisciplinary, knowledge-intensive, and its education and training
are constrained by unusual measures demanded by the concerns about radiation and nuclear
safety, physical protection of nuclear materials and facilities, and safeguards to prevent diversion
of nuclear material. This requires vast faculty resources as also extraordinary and expensive
infrastructure for conducting nuclear education making the task of human resource development
in nuclear science and technology a challenging one. The human resource for the nuclear
energy programme in India so far has been developed in-house in the DAE. However, large
requirement of manpower to take forward the growing nuclear energy programme in the country
can be met only by extending concurrently the reach of the human resource development
activity in nuclear science and technology. The DAE is therefore supporting the university system
in India, which is gearing up to the need of offering nuclear energy related courses. It
may be emphasized that nuclear education, being a means of preservation and transmission
of explicit knowledge, is just one component of nuclear knowledge management (NKM). The
NKM also involves creation of mechanisms to preserve and transmit implicit and tacit knowledge.
The steps outlined above will hopefully ensure, not only an uninterrupted delivery of
knowledgeable and skilled manpower for the envisaged expansion of nuclear energy programme,
but would also pave the way for developing a system for a wholesome nuclear knowledge
management.