Building work on the new National College for Nuclear at Lillyhall will begin at the end of August.

In the meantime the team behind the project will be looking at the curriculum for the new centre, which is expected to open in September 2017.

The £15m facility at the Lakes College site, and a second to be built in Somerset, are set to train 7,000 students by 2020.

Some of those will be taking longer courses and some will be taking part in specialist one-day training opportunities.

Chris Nattress, principal of Lakes College, said: “We are delighted to confirm that we will commence construction of the new Northern Training Hub for the National College for Nuclear here at Lakes College towards the end of August.

"We are well underway with designing courses, qualifications and training programmes specifically for the nuclear sector, setting out quality and standards, and starting to raise awareness about the development of a brand new College for Nuclear, in the UK and internationally.”

Led by Sellafield Ltd and EDF Energy, in partnership with Lakes College and the University of Cumbria, the training facilities will include a realtor simulator and engineering workshops.

One of the key features be the latest virtual reality technology, allowing technicians to learn about the complexities of nuclear decommissioning away from the Sellafield site.

Chris Nattress, Lakes College principal, said:”Getting people onto the Sellafield site is extremely time consuming and expensive, so if we’ve got a really high end, virtual environment the teams of technicians can work on complicated decommissioning activity.”