The aim and the overall objective of the project was to build European Nuclear Experimental Educational Platform (ENEEP). The project was successful in doing so and prepared an ENEEP platform which serves European users to enhance their experimental education and hands-on activities in nuclear curricula, particularly in the field of nuclear safety and radiation protection.
ENEEP was established as an open platform for any European university or European research institute that is actively involved in experimental nuclear education, training and competence building. The ENEEP founding members are the five partners of the project, i.e. STU, CTU, TU Wien, JSI, and BME. All partners are heavily involved in experimental nuclear education, training and competence building. Four project partners, namely STU, CTU, TU Wien and BME, established in 2003 the Eugene Wigner course which put together three research nuclear reactors and offered experimental reactor courses for master students in nuclear engineering using these reactors.
Nowadays, it is difficult to enable access to research nuclear reactors for students and their lecturers to provide them with a possibility of passing through dedicated nuclear reactor physics experiments or hand-on reactor technology experience. The ENEEP creates opportunities to get access to nuclear experimental facilities such as research reactors and specific experimental laboratories for university students at all academic levels (bachelors, masters and doctoral), professors, lecturers, experts in nuclear education, etc. In addition to the nuclear education, ENEEP offers specific nuclear training of professionals, particularly young professionals and post-docs at the beginning of their professional career. Staff from governmental and non-commercially oriented companies such as regulatory bodies, governmental organizations dealing with various aspects of peaceful use of nuclear energy, research institutions, etc. will be trained.
The project addresses the need of maintaining the availability of experimental nuclear education, training and competence building at research facilities at the European level, which is recently ever more challenging, due to numerous research facilities being shut down, high facility operating costs, high level of retirement of personnel in the nuclear field, increasing complex security issues related to access to nuclear facilities, etc. The project developed processes to interconnect the partner research facilities in a coordinated effort to prepare and make available modern education, training and competence building activities to students and trainees communities.
