Liam, Dounreay Apprentice: Film transcript

I’m Liam Sutherland I’m an instrument apprentice here at Dounreay I’m currently in my second. Year. We calibrate all the different monitors and that around the site, G64s for monitoring like gamma radiation, alpha, beta and that. They come up here and we do yearly calibrations and that then once it’s calibrated, we put it back out to them that’s pretty important like. I’d like to complete my apprenticeship and hopefully get a job out here full time. I start kind of look towards it in fourth year and then and fifth year I applied and got the apprenticeship and that.

Dounreay is obviously a very good place to be it’s very well recognised throughout the schools and that and I suppose the general differences between college and being on site. is when you’re actually on site you’re learning trade specific skills and then when you’re in college you’re learning your kind of academic skills which is all general stuff whether you’re electrical, mechanical, instrument your all the same thing you’re learning this same stuff through college which is it’s quite good then cause then you get to go through college with your mates and that and enjoy it all the better.

The skills that you learn through your apprenticeship are very transferable you can use over such a wide variety of different jobs once you complete your apprenticeship. The team up here have been very supportive the very good with their apprentices obviously the transferring all their skills and knowledge you can kind of pass on also so you can try and learn what they’ve been through there’s been apprentices here for decades and everybody’s had to go through the same kind of process.