Conference Agenda

The European Nuclear Education Network (ENEN), in partnership with key stakeholders and under the framework of the ENEN2plus project, has launched a comprehensive Nuclear Education Hub—accessible via https://nuclear-education.eu/—as a single-entry digital platform to consolidate, promote, and enhance nuclear education, training, and career development opportunities across Europe. This initiative addresses pressing challenges related to the fragmentation of nuclear knowledge resources, lack of visibility of career pathways, and the aging workforce in the nuclear sector. The Hub centralizes access to a wide spectrum of nuclear disciplines, ensuring a sustainable, user-friendly, and data-driven environment that bridges educational providers, learners, professionals, and institutional stakeholders.

As the nuclear sector transitions towards next-generation technologies—including Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), advanced waste management solutions, medical isotope production, and nuclear applications in space and fusion—a critical bottleneck remains: the need for a skilled, multidisciplinary, and agile workforce. Addressing this, ENEN and its consortium partners envisioned the HUB as a long-term, interoperable, and open-access digital infrastructure. Its scope encompasses academic programs (BSc, MSc, PhD), vocational training, internships, postdoctoral positions, and job vacancies across research, industry, healthcare, and regulatory sectors.

The development of the Hub aligns with the strategic outcomes of ENEN2plus Work Packages (WPs) 3, 4, and 5, focusing respectively on cross-border mobility, education/training mapping, and stakeholder engagement. Moreover, the platform is integrated with key European databases. The integration ensures coherence, avoids duplication, and supports harmonized standards in nuclear education and training.

The Hub's architecture was co-designed with input from academia, research institutions, industry, regulators, and student associations, ensuring responsiveness to user needs. It uses a modular backend that allows for dynamic content updates and controlled access to administrative functionalities. A governance plan ensures regular validation and update of content, engaging both automated and human verification processes to maintain data reliability and usability. This sustainability plan includes mechanisms for post-project maintenance under the ENEN Secretariat.

Content-wise, the Hub reflects the broad disciplinary landscape of the nuclear field. It includes domains such as reactor physics, radiochemistry, nuclear safety and security, decommissioning and waste management, radiation protection, medical applications of nuclear technology (diagnostics, therapy), nuclear law and ethics, nuclear fusion, and space-oriented nuclear technologies. It also innovatively integrates social sciences and humanities (SSH) aspects of nuclear energy—covering communication, stakeholder engagement, and ethics, contributing to critical area: gaining societal trust and enhancing responsible innovation in nuclear energy.

For students, the Hub offers personalized exploration paths filtered by educational level, country, language, and topic. It also connects students to European mobility programs and scholarship opportunities, including those funded under Horizon Europe and EURATOM. For professionals, it provides continuing professional development (CPD) resources, upskilling and reskilling options, certification opportunities, and direct access to calls for proposals, expert networks, and scientific conferences. Teachers and trainers can access teaching resources, curriculum blueprints, and collaborative tools to enhance nuclear outreach.

A significant innovation is the integration of infrastructure access opportunities from the NRT-12 projects. The Hub enables researchers to locate experimental facilities, simulation environments, various labs, and other resources necessary for cutting-edge research and training. This infrastructure map allows for transparent access conditions, boosting the transnational utilization of key nuclear facilities and reinforcing the European Research Area.

To maximize outreach and accessibility, the Hub incorporates mobile responsiveness, and compliance with web accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1).

Strategic dissemination campaigns—leveraging social media, webinars, and academic conferences—have been launched to promote the Hub among target audiences, including secondary school students, early-career researchers, and nuclear professionals.

Initial analytics from the Hub’s launch phase (2024–2025) reveal strong uptake across EU Member States and associated countries, particularly among MSc and PhD students seeking mobility opportunities. Feedback from stakeholder surveys indicates a high level of satisfaction with the Hub’s usability, relevance, and value as a career navigation tool. Lessons learned from user interactions are being fed back into iterative development cycles, with new features.

In conclusion, the ENEN Nuclear Education Hub represents a strategic milestone in ENEN’s/European efforts to consolidate nuclear education and training ecosystems. By providing a single, authoritative point of entry to a wide pool of learning and professional development resources, the Hub addresses systemic gaps in visibility, accessibility, and coherence across the nuclear sector. It contributes to building a robust, future-ready nuclear workforce capable of meeting Europe’s energy challenges, research excellence, and societal needs. Through its strong governance model and integration into the ENEN digital infrastructure, the Hub is well-positioned for long-term sustainability and scalability, making it an important resource for nuclear human capacity building in Europe and beyond.

The Philippines is seeking to integrate nuclear power into its energy mix through the signing of Executive Order No. 164 (s. 2022). However, with the shutdown of the country’s sole nuclear reactor facility for 34 years and the discontinuation of nuclear engineering degree programs in universities in the 1980’s, the nation faces a significant gap in nuclear knowledge. Developing expertise through educational programs has become a challenge, essentially requiring the country to start from scratch. With plans to commission its first nuclear power plant (NPP) by 2032, efforts are underway to ensure the long-term sustainability of nuclear energy through capacity building via comprehensive educational programmes. As recommended by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), workforce development should begin at least nine years prior to the operation of the first NPP. One of the best practices of countries embarking on, expanding, or maintaining their nuclear power programs is the use of simulators in education and training. Simulators enhance the understanding of nuclear technologies through hands-on learning and provide a broad spectrum of insights into lessons learned and good practices.

To address this need, the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (PNRI) launched the NuSIM project in July 2024. The project aims to locally establish a full-scope, high-fidelity nuclear plant simulator for research, development, and capacity building. The simulator represents a generic two-loop Generation III pressurized water reactor (3983 MW thermal power, 1400 MW net electrical output). It features a network block diagram with one instructor station and ten student stations, displays the interface on six large video screens, creating an immersive and interactive learning environment. During initial meetings with academic institutions, it was identified that there is a need for both nuclear engineering education and training on NPP operations. The NuSIM project seeks to develop an integrated approach that combines lectures with practical, hands-on learning on plant operations and fundamentals, including reactor physics, thermal-hydraulics, and safety aspects. As a key component of NPP training programs, NuSIM plays a crucial role in effective training by directly impacting nuclear safety—reducing human errors and helping prevent and mitigate the consequences of plant accidents. The simulator enables the testing of accurate and effective procedures under realistic conditions.

The NuSIM facility is designed for a broad range of end-users, including academic institutions, regulatory bodies, policymakers, utilities, researchers, and other concerned government agencies. As a locally available resource, NuSIM reduces the need for costly overseas training while providing hands-on experience that balances knowledge across diverse backgrounds. It enhances expertise in nuclear engineering, fosters better communication and coordination among future NPP workers, and allows for the creation of customized learning packages tailored to specific groups. Additionally, it builds capacity in specialized areas of nuclear education and training. Thus, the NuSIM project supports a more systematic and synchronized approach to workforce development, strengthening the country's nuclear competency and readiness.

Research reactors are traditionally utilized for scientific studies, academic training, and professional development, targeting individuals already oriented toward nuclear science, such as bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD students. However, with increasing public fear of nuclear technology, exacerbated by historical misconceptions and contemporary geopolitical instability, the field faces a significant decline in interest and new talent. This study investigates the potential of research reactors to engage high school students before they make academic or career choices, aiming to spark interest and reshape negative perceptions of nuclear technology. Evaluation of pre- and post-visit + theoretical lesson perceptions of high school classes (ages 18–19) to a research reactor in Italy was conducted using the same questionnaire employed in the Eurobarometer 2010 - Europeans and Nuclear Safety study. The preliminary results suggest a significant shift in perception: the percentage of students associating nuclear technology exclusively with negative concepts decreased by 15%. Trust in the safe operation of nuclear reactors increased by 19%, confidence in the company operating the reactor rose by 18%, and the belief that nuclear energy can help mitigate global warming also increased. Furthermore, students expressed the view that nuclear energy would generally have a positive impact on the national economy. Overall, participants reported feeling more informed about nuclear safety and more confident in the potential future use of nuclear energy.

These findings suggest that research reactors can play a pivotal role not only in advanced academic education but also as tools for early engagement and awareness-building among younger generations.