Sustainable nuclear education and training in Europe and beyond – Examples of the ENEN2plus, TOURR and GRE@T-PIONEeR projects

Maintaining education at an advanced level open at European universities has been a major challenge during the past 10–15 years. The aftermaths of the Fukushima accident and phasing out of nuclear power in some countries resulted in a decreasing student enrolment at universities in nuclear science and engineering. Although providing courses at the BSc and MSc level remained possible in some cases, offering more advanced and specialized courses was made difficult, due to too few students such courses typically attract at a given university. In response to the alarming situation, different initiatives at the European levels were undertaken. These initiatives were designed to foster collaboration among various European universities with the purpose of complementing each other’s expertise, course offering, and access to facilities. Also, more flexible ways of providing education were implemented, so that the offered courses could attract enough students. This was made possible thanks to the use of online educational techniques, allowing to share students and teachers between courses. Finally, actions were undertaken to make nuclear science and engineering more visible and attractive. In this paper, examples from the ENEN2plus, TOURR and GRE@T-PIONEeR projects are reported.