<< Background >>The present market needs, and those that are envisioned for the coming future, of the nuclear sector for qualified nuclear engineers, technologists, radiation protection officers (RPO) and radiation protection experts (RPE) are enormous. Just think, e.g., of the number of nuclear reactors that are or will soon be in shutdown in Europe. Large decommissioning projects and waste management plans demand an interdisciplinary team of workers to prove successful, keeping into consideration financial, technological, management and human aspects. Many current workers will have to be retrained on the work floorRecently the corona pandemic enhanced and forced the digitalization of education. The learning activities need to be more advanced and diverse. Therefore, the proposed ones - online collaborative learning, virtual reality, serious gaming, remote teaching, online organisation of group activities and evaluations, training digital skills for all educators (lifelong learning) - meet this education need. All students and professors are longing for going back to ‘normal’ and our partnership believes that the ‘new normal’ could integrate the best of in-person and e-learning approach by blending and optimizing E-activities with the interactive ‘classroom’ activities. However, this needs to be built on good and relevant scenarios tuned for each new kind of E-activity. In fact, special non-common knowledge cannot efficiently be shared or transferred outside of an interactive ‘classroom’ environment. Moreover, the development of most soft skills as well as specialized technical skills needs interaction and a role-playing environment. Combining all these skills in a blended approach integrating interactive digital learning activities and dedicated face2face training is challenging. Making proper decisions in difficult situations like in complex surrounding of a nuclear decommissioning site, contaminated legacy site or a nuclear medical center cannot be learned just by the usual remote teaching: streaming and recording of classes; a blend of expert advice, virtual reality and real experience is important to gain these competences and to prepare the students for their professional challenges.<< Objectives >>The goal of the strategic partnership is to increase the knowledge sharing in radiation protection and safe use of radiation sources across the European countries. To achieve this, the project aims at improving the blended learning activities with new innovative educational approaches that enable and stimulate collaboration and can adapt quickly to current difficult circumstances using E- and M-learning combined with a safe offering of practices. However, special attention is needed for the development of the soft skills using digital education not only from the point of view of competences but also for the wellbeing of the students. Bearing in mind this aspect, the current project aims to develop blended and remote teaching approaches in the form of educational collaborative games that are embedded in a strong learning environment.<< Implementation >>The project is divided in three different phases:(1) The first phase is dedicated to the training and exchange of good practices related to digital, virtual training tools between the educational staff. The result of this phase is the acquisition of the needed knowledge to reach the expected project results. A first meeting will bring together teaching staff members who will coach the student in the establishing of collaboration oriented VR tools. The result will be written in the R1 final report (toolkit).(2) The second phase will be dedicated to the writing of the VR and Escape game scenarios and the initial testing of their applicability. This will include virtual and real mobilities to bring students together to evaluate the different actions involved in each process related to the scenario. . The VR-tool is connected to real live actions (sampling, measurements,etc.) since practical skills can only be properly acquired in this way. The real mobility will be organized by one of the partners allowing the possibility to use specific devices and test partly or entirely the application of the newly developed VR-tool. This phase will end with the mid-term transnational meeting and the final choice of the scenario that will be implemented. In the case of measurement of radioactivity within the environment, an online collaborative course will also be created.(3) The third phase will be the implementation of the scenarios in virtual tools based on the experiences gathered in the test phase. This will lead to the results R2, R3 and R4. This phase will end by the test of the online tools VR or Escape game) by a cohort of students and professionals (mainly linked to the associated partners).Different activities will be performed to fulfil the project:- Workshop for staff (teacher and IT manager) to write the tool kit- Remote meeting of students coached by a teacher to evaluate the need for VR and Collaborative online course (year 1) and to begin writing the scenarios - Two face to face training weeks (one for VR tool and the other for the Escape room) in one partner institution to finalize the writing of the scenario (end of year I)- Virtual training school to settle the collaborative online course- One transnational meeting to accept scenarios- Collaborative work to create the VR software, Escape room and collaborative online course (during year 2).- One face to face training course to finalize the collaborative online course- A test of the different tools by a cohort of student<< Results >>The result expected from the project are :- R1 : Methodology and toolkit. Leader:HE2B-ISIB; co-leader: UHasselt. The result will consist on a report upload on a folder dedicated to staff member in the TEAMS- R2 : VR on medical application. Leader: UBologna Co-leaders: HMannheim, UPValencia. The aim is to set up a simulation scenario to be used to train the participants to react appropriately to incidents in Nuclear medicine. This being the case, the most educational incidents will have to be selected for simulation. This first task will be in charge of Bologna University in collaboration with the Nuclear medicine department of the University hospital.- R3 : Virtual escape room for mapping and treatment of radiological contaminated sites (Blended learning on environmental radioactivity, collaborative learning, serious gaming) Leader: CTU in Prague Co-leader: SURO, UHasselt. An escape room is a type of game where a group of people are set in a themed room with a series of puzzles or challenges to solve. For the development of an online escape-room commercially available tools combined with video conferencing apps will be selected in such a way to enable access for participants of external countries. The tools that will be evaluated for this purpose are: Microsoft or google forms, blackboard/toledo related tools and quizzes, Microsoft office related applications, OneNote, ThingLink, Canva interactive, Jigsaw element, etc. Via the selection of tools freely available or available via the licenses (allowing guest access) of partner institutions we can achieve the involvement of a broad range of participants. A range of digital tools will be discussed and evaluated via the workshop (‘result R1’), for the educational teams involved, aimed to share good practices on E-collaboration, digital learning and the integration of educational technology, and to reflect on strategic approaches to digitalization.- R4 : Online collaborative course in environmental radioactivity. Leader: UHasselt Co-leader: Covilha, HE2B-ISIB. This will consist on the creation of a script for online collaborative learning on radon (a universal environmental problem) in an internationalization at home set-up with support of all stakeholders (research, trainers, regulatory bodies and industry) which can be transferred to other topics of environmental measurements. The resulting educational materials and approach can be used in the further design of escape rooms like the one build in R3 (transferability). The impact is not only an innovative way of learning a specialised nuclear measurement technique but also to encourage other employability skills and soft skills necessary for their future carreer.

Europe is the world’s largest supplier and among the world’s largest users of medical radioisotopes. A secure supply of these isotopes is key to support a safe, high quality and reliable use of radiological and nuclear technology in healthcare. As most medical radioisotopes are produced by the European HPRRs (high-power research reactors) and MPRRs (medium-power research reactors), these reactors play a major role for the time-critical supply chain of these radioisotopes, but also for fundamental and applied research using neutrons. The proposed project EU-CONVERSION will contribute to securing these supply chains via the supply of safe low-enriched uranium fuels for the HEU to LEU conversion and long-term operation of the European research reactors. To facilitate their deployment, the project will generate the necessary trust at the nuclear regulators and technical support organizations for the challenges of the upcoming conversions, including the use of digital technologies and advanced computational methods in nuclear safety. In a long term, the knowledge and innovations created within this project will also contribute to the European strategic goals to maintain a world-leading innovative nuclear industry, and to increase the competencies in nuclear technology. To achieve these objectives, the proposed actions within EU-CONVERSION include the consolidation of generic fuel qualification data together with two reactor-representative irradiation tests for HPRR conversions, the demonstration of sustainable and efficient European supply chains for advanced LEU research reactor fuels for HPRRs and MPRRs, as well as the establishment of modern computational methods for nuclear safety analysis and fuel performance modeling.

This strategic partnership educational program presented in this document is established between European Universities, National Regulatory Bodies and Research Institutes. Its content fully complies with requirements of modern educational structures, in the field of radiation protection. In our proposal, the access to learning materials for a large group of student and professionals is made easier through the use of e-learning systems. The program is focused on students from partner – or other European – Universities, as well as on employed professionals (such as members of Regulatory Bodies, hospital employees, firms and research centers), concerned by ionizing radiations and willing to improve their skills or to restore their knowledge in the field of radiation protection. The program consists in 6 intensive courses, and 6 modules on e-learning. The content of each course has been carefully selected. The preparation of educational programs and their later implementation is planned to be a joint effort of all partners. To this end, several working meetings including all European potential partners have already been organized with the purpose of performing an overview of the comprehensive situation in teaching and training radiation protection programs. These meetings have been organized in Mol (Belgium, 17th of February 2014), in Hasselt (Belgium, 25th of February 2014), in Bologna (Italy, 8th of April 2014) and in Thessaloniki (Greece, 27th of May 2014). Another meeting in foreseen in Prague (Czech Republic, 1th of April 2015)An important part of the project is related to the harmonization of training and teaching programs in different European countries, with the perspective of developing the skills defined in the directive 2013/59/EURATOM (5th of December 2013). These activities aim at ensuring a sustainable development of competences for technological key fields for the future, e.g. nuclear energy (including decommissioning and waste management), health (nuclear medicine, radiation therapy), etc. The first year of the project solution will be mainly dedicated to the preparation of the 24 ECTS program, as well as to the promotion of the program in different Institutions. The program will be divided into three types of teaching activities, plus an internship. The teaching activities will be split in distance learning modules, advanced courses and practical training. The distance learning will be proposed for basic knowledge modules. The expected impact of the strategic partnership will propose many significant improvements for students: improving the knowledge in nuclear physics, in nuclear chemistry and in radiation protection; improving the range of knowledge in the field of study through discussions with teachers and researchers from different parts of Europe; improving independence in making decision; improving skills from own results presentation in an international group of students; improving skills to stand up for personal opinion; improving experimental skills by using new devices and data processing; creating new friendships with the students from different European countries – new personal contacts for future collaboration; improving students language skills, etc. The teachers will have the opportunity to participate in experiments, which are often not possible in the standard organization of their own universities. They can also have the possibility to exchange informations about study programs in different European universities in the field of nuclear engineering, which are the basic step for inter-universities study training.

Public awareness to environmental risk is key for building resilient societies. ArtEmis will develop a smart sensor system, monitoring radon, temperature, acidity and other observables in groundwater in real time. The ground-breaking sensor design will assure affordability, resilience and low power consumption optimizing life cycle management. The project aims to produce 100-200 sensors, that will be deployed in sensitive sites in collaboration with municipalities. Changes in radon concentration have the potential to serve as precursor for earthquakes and volcano eruptions. To advance our knowledge in this field we propose the development of a cheap sensor system, that can be employed on a large scale in earthquake prone areas of Europe. The real time collected data is used to build machine learning (ML) models for the analysis. The collected and AI processed data will generate a real time map of hydrological and geochemical changes that is shared to the scientific community and public bodies engaged in the project. A pilot project engaging citizens of the participating municipalities is part of the dissemination and exploitation activities. We expect artEmis to clarify the longstanding issue of earthquake predictions by means of geochemical precursors like changes in radon concentration. The system is designed for scalability. Dissemination and exploitation activities are tailormade to ensure support and expansion of artEmis after the project’s completion. Radon content in water causes health issues and artEmis offers a novel way to monitor both content of radon as well as changes in real time that may indicate changes in flow pattern. Hence, artEmis is facilitating multi-purpose use of the sensor system. The project will result in a shift of paradigm for environmental monitoring and natural hazards and in this fashion render Europe a leading role in environmental monitoring.

HARMONISE puts forward a holistic approach for studying the body of knowledge required to accomplish harmonization and standardization of methodologies, codes and standards as well as the assessment of nuclear reactor components. Departure from a prescriptive-based to a performance-based approach in nuclear regulatory regimes is to be examined under the prism of conformity with the safety objectives of innovative fission and fusion facilities. To this end, data related to fusion installations is expected to stem from the ITER safety demonstrations, whereas data pertinent to advanced fission designs – such as fast breeder reactors and SMRs – will be extracted from relevant EC-funded projects. The basis for HARMONISE activities will be the outcomes of relevant research and cooperation activities in standardization and nuclear safety considering also the lessons learnt from the stress tests performed in the EU. HARMONISE will examine issues related to qualification, standardization, V&V and licensing of fission and fusion installations, while taking into account stakeholder involvement. The benefits of adopting digital twins of nuclear installations during the design phase will be reviewed, while also identifying the cross-cutting activities that contribute to collaborative research efforts between fission and fusion. HARMONISE will address issues related to the preliminary safety assessments and licensing needs of innovative fission and fusion installations; risk-informed, performance-based approaches in licensing reviews and regulatory decision-making; harmonisation and standardisation on component assessments, methodologies, codes and standards and draw lessons from earlier experience in harmonisation efforts. HARMONISE findings will be disseminated to the nuclear safety regulators of EU MSs along with the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine as material to be considered during safety verification and licensing of future fission and fusion installations.