Final Report Summary - EU-NMR-AN (Towards a European Competence Centre for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) on Actinides) This Coordination and Support activity EU-NMR-AN was aimed at laying the path towards establishment of a European Competence Centre for NMR on actinides by bringing together the NMR community and the nuclear research community. The project took on as grand challenge to alleviate missing nuclear competence in the NMR field by establishing identifying future trends and promising application fields in NMR actinide research and by so doing attract new researchers to the field and ultimately support establishment of a European NMR Centre. The EU-NMR-AN project has successfully established a synergistic collaboration between European institutions and contacts to important institutions overseas working on NMR investigations of radioactive material, which is an importance step towards establishment of a European NMR Center. This was achieved through two main activities: the establishment of a round table of experts in NMR spectroscopy, in actinide chemistry or both and organising a workshop on the application of NMR investigations to studies of nuclear and radioactive materials, held in Karlsruhe in January 2010. The workshop provided a platform for discussion of challenges in applying nuclear magnetic techniques such as NMR to studies of paramagnetic f-elements, a little-explored realm at present; some advanced NMR techniques have not yet been used in studies of paramagnetic f-element (lanthanide and actinide) systems. With support by the members of the expert round table and the potential new areas of application identified and discussed at the workshop, the first importance step in establishing new NMR nuclear facilities to be available at the European Competence Centre for NMR on actinides were made. There is presently a subsequent application for funding in the FP7-Fission-2010 Call (proposal No. 269923, 'Trans-national access to unique European actinide and radiological nuclear magnetic resonance facilities', EURACT-NMR; the same acronym as the workshop in January 2010), which is presently under negotiation. This new proposal is to provide equitable financial support for access to newly nuclearised advanced NMR instrumentation in Europe over the next two years and was highly graded in evaluation by external reviewers. If this new proposal goes through, then we consider this previous coordination action completely successful.EU-NMR-AN project activities focused on two things: 1) establishment of an expert round table and 2) organisation of a workshop thematically oriented on NMR investigations on nuclear materials. The NMR expert round table had a scientific advisory function and assisted in planning of the workshop. It will also provide stewardship for the European NMR Centre in the future, to guide successful extension of NMR centre facilities available and aid in coordination of activities and access to the centre. The workshop entitled 'EURACT-NMR - European radioactive nuclear magnetic resonance' was held in Karlsruhe, 26-29 January 2010. Copies of the presentations are found on the web (see http://www.euract-nmr.kit.edu/92.php online). A copy of the book of abstracts for the workshop, the EURACT-NMR workshop logo and the group picture taken of participants at the workshop are uploaded with this report.The major potential impact of NMR competence to the European actinide community will be to generate new, not yet available scientific information. It will most certainly be a seed to future research, which potentially can secure fundamental knowledge of chemistry and physics of f-element systems (and other radionuclides) such as new insights to central questions of electronic structure-bonding relationships, e.g. necessary for identifying and quantifying factors contributing to the stability and reactivity important to a wide field of applied research, including coordination chemistry of f-elements, separation chemistry, irradiated fuels, actinide materials, waste management issues, etc. Related documents Final Report - EU-NMR-AN (Towards a European Competence Centre for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) on Actinides)
