Strengthening a European user facility for nuclear research
Ensuring access to the European and international research infrastructures is key to scientific progress in the nuclear field including radiation protection, one of the foundation blocks of the European Research Area. Community support will be provided to cover the costs of transnational access for researchers or research teams from Member States and Associated States to European and international state-of-the-art nuclear research infrastructures in other countries.
Users are provided access (at no cost to the researcher) to world-class nuclear research facilities, technical expertise from experienced scientists and engineers, and assistance with experiment design, assembly, safety analysis, and examination.
The objective is to promote and enhance access to infrastructures that provide essential and unique services to the European research community and are typically beyond the reach of individual laboratories, to advance research in all areas (except for fusion research undertaken by the European Partnership in fusion research) covered in Annex I of the Council Regulation establishing the Euratom Programme.
The Commission encourages international cooperation with third countries and international organisations within the scope of this action, also to avoid any duplication with the FIDES initiative from the OECD/NEA, while investigating their complementarities. Support for researchers from non-EU stakeholders (including academia, research centres and industrial laboratories), third countries and international organisations is envisaged, where such access is part of the promotion of international cooperation with the countries or international organisations concerned and if researchers from Euratom Member States have equivalent access to their infrastructures.
Based on the lessons learnt from former and current user facility projects, a framework and a set of common rules will be further improved for the future sustainable operation of a network of ‘Euratom User Facilities’. A dedicated support for the mobility of learners and/or link with the proposal from topic HORIZON-EURATOM-2026-01-03 could be an advantage.
The active participation of major infrastructure operators will be required to achieve these objectives. The support scheme should operate by open calls and offer infrastructure access, technical expertise from experienced scientists and engineers and assistance with experiment design, assembly, safety analysis and examination.
Proposals could pool the necessary financial resources from the participating national (or regional) research programmes with a view to implementing transnational proposals resulting in grants to third parties to implement activities of this action.
The proposal should include an option for JRC to use the future project’s operational environment, as a centralised platform supported by Euratom for facilitating the access to the JRC’s nuclear research infrastructures, for the implementation of the dedicated complementing Coordinate Support Action between DG JRC and DG RTD on Open access to the JRC nuclear infrastructures.