Project working procedures have been established. Project bodies were identified and financial procedures set. Webpage has been designed and installed. Situation in partner labs was described and financial opportunities identified. Collaborating strategy in V4 countries has been discussed and prepared. Visits in partners labs allowed to establish links between teams. Current and future financing possibilities have been analysed and reviewed pointing to the limited number of financing programs allowing for use in regional scale. Most of financial streams are focused on national projects or EU programs. Few programs support bilateral cooperation. There is a clear lack of projects adapted to regional cooperation. A possible solution could be ERA+ like projects available for more than two partners. Thermohydraulic and neutronic analyses have been carried out allowing for the comparison of the methods used. Rules of the collaboration were tested via benchmark exercises. A one-day school has been organized presenting current state of research on gas-cooled reactors to students and young researchers.
Main objectives of the VINCO project foreseen in DoA have been achieved, namely:
(i) Research procedures on nuclear technologies in V4 countries have been compared leading to better understanding, more precise definition of specializations and efficient structure of current and future research activities. Principles of cooperation and rules of access to existing and planned infrastructure have been developed and used;
(ii) Benchmarking exercises carried out allowed for the unification of simulation procedures in participant laboratories;
(iii) Joint visits, workshops, benchmarking exercises lead to strengthening the links between partners. Objectives of the R&D activities in cooperating countries were identified, resources and research infrastructures described, as well as educational and training capabilities. This has allowed further proposals, e.g. FOREvER (joint research) or DINAMIC (joint educational activities) projects. Investment priorities in V4 countries were identified;
(iv) Synergy and complementarity has been increased by focusing the research on defined topics, e.g. Hungary and Czech Republic work on new fuels, Poland on structural materials and is developing a material research centre NOMATEN;
(v) VINCO project led also to establish new joint projects and proposals, e.g. DINAMIC, FOREvER, GEMMA and M4F. New material-related projects will be proposed by NOMATEN CoE;
(vi) VINCO project supported V4G4 Association, during V4G4 meetings VINCO results were presented and discussed, our Web platform served V4G4 CoE.
Contacts with decision makers were established. These activities helped to prepare a governmental report on the perspectives of HTR technology. This report has been approved by the Polish Ministry of Energy and led to the GOSPOSTRATEG project which can be regarded as the follow-up action of VINCO. VINCO activities helped also to prepare NOMATEN Centre of Excellence (Teaming for Excellence program). NOMATEN objective is to establish a CoE focused on advanced materials, it will operate on the open access basis and has been conceived as a material node of the future distributed regional research Centre for Gen 4 reactors in V4 countries. Similar role will be played by helium loop in Czech Republic (SUSEN project, helium technology node), whereas the simulation activities will be coordinated by Slovakia and fuel studies by Hungary. Dissemination of information about the project was done using VINCO webpage and presented at various events. Brochure was prepared and distributed by project participants.
