EUROTRANS Project (FP6)

Background

In the global effort to bring sustainable energy sources, advanced fuel cycles including Partitioning and Transmutation (P&T) are widely investigated for the future of nuclear energy. The ongoing research shows the potential benefits of P&T contributing to simplifying the management of present and future radioactive waste, including:

• The large reduction of long term radioactivity, radiotoxicity and fissile materials inventories that can contribute to improving the public acceptance of the unavoidable geological repositories, and
• The minimization of short and medium term heat sources that can allow a reduction in the volume required by the high level wastes in repositories, increasing their effective capacity and reducing their number.

In this sense P&T is expected to contribute both to the sustainability of nuclear energy in those countries that pursue this source of energy and to easy the final repository requirements of countries using nuclear energy at present.

Objective

Having started its mission in the area of reactor engineering focussing on the academic world, ENEN is now extending its activities to other areas such as waste management, radiation protection, and innovative concepts, expanding from the academic world (education) to the industrial and regulatory worlds (training).

Participants

• Party P13.1:  AGH-University of Science and Technology (AGH-UST, Krakow, Poland)

• Party P13.2:  Atominstitut der Oesterreichischen Universitaeten (ATI, Vienna, Austria)

• Party P13.3:  Consortium Interuniversitario per la Ricerca Technologica Nuclear (CIRTEN, Pisa, Italy)

• Party P13.4:  J. W. Goethe Universität (IAP-FU, Frankfurt, Germany) 

• Party P13.5:  ETS Institute Quíc de Sarriá (IQS, Barcelona, Spain)

• Party P13.6:  Royal Technical Institute Stockholm (KTH, Stockholm, Sweden) - since April 2006

• Party P13.7:  Ruhr Universität Bochum (RUB-LEE, Bochum, Germany)

• Party P13.8:  Delft University of Technology (DUT, Delft, The Netherlands)

• Party P13.9:  Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium)

• Party P13.10: Université de Liège (ULG, Liege, Belgium)

• Party P13.11: Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED, Madrid, Spain)

• Party P13.12: Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM, Madrid, Spain)

• Party P13.13: Deparamanto de Ingenieria Quimica y Nuclear Universidad Politechnica Valencia (UPV, Valencia, Spain)

• Party P13.14: University of Santiago de Compostela (USDC Santiago, Spain)

• Party P13.15: Universidad de Sevilla (USE, Sevilla, Spain)

• Party P13.16: Uppsala Universitet (UU, Uppsala, Sweden)

• Party P13.17: Universität Hannover (ZSR Hannover, Germany)

> All participants of IP EUROTRANS 

ENEN's Role

Clearly, ENEN is providing the link between the students in the Universities and the scientists working at the participating institutes of EUROTRANS. ENEN is connecting the students already during their stay at the universities with ongoing research work and their potential future employers, i.e. the industry, the national research centres, and the JRCs.

Organised and focused by ENEN and the participating Universities, a considerable part of the scientific work of EUROTRANS is performed by young students and researchers in the Universities. ENEN will co-ordinate the University activities including the collection and pooling of the annual cost statements.

In addition, special educational efforts are performed by ENEN and the EUROTRANS partners. Of special importance are lectures at universities, workshops, short courses, and summer schools dedicated to transmutation. Training and education (E&T) of students on the job, e.g. via a diploma thesis and/or a PhD thesis, is an important mission of EUROTRANS, as these young students and researchers shall gradually be recruited as post doctoral students and junior staff.

The interdisciplinary character of EUROTRANS research (e.g. reactor physics, materials science, radiochemistry, thermal-hydraulics, instrumentation, engineering design) makes it particularly well adapted for the training of PhD students and researchers.

ENEN is in charge of the organisation of 10 Internal Training Courses(ITC) in close collaboration with the Project Office and takes care of the reporting about these courses. The Knowledge Management system is used to support the courses, from announcements to storage and dissemination of the training course results. This includes programme, abstracts, papers, presentations and reports. Ample time will be left for open debates and exchange of scientific experiences amongst teachers and students. These courses are of utmost importance for the knowledge transfer between experienced scientists and educated young scientists.

>>Juan Antonio Rubio - Paul Govaerts EUROTRANS ENEN Prize for the Best Doctoral Dissertations

    > News of 29 April 2010

    > News of 10 November 2010  

        > Prize application (Jury member only)

>> Official website EUROTRANS