Education and training
ork Package 5 coordinates and supports all activities related to dissemination of the results, education and training dedicated to Master and PhD students, as well as post-docs and young professionals involved in the Project, notably by managing the calls for mobility grants.
Education is acknowledged as the fundamental basis to establish a new generation of expert scientists and technicians, knowledgeable in the safety aspects of heavy-liquid-metal-cooled systems.
Events of two different kinds will be offered to students and young researchers within PASCAL.
- A Summer School, with a broad focus targeting the dualism safety-informed design / licensing-oriented safety assessment, will be organized by RATEN-ICN tentatively contiguous to the Nuclear 2024 conference in Pitesti, Romania. The School will address the main challenges related to the development and design of LFRs, as well as the regulatory and technical requirements for licensing. State-of-the-art information will be provided on the research carried out in PASCAL, relevant to this topic, with lecturers identified within the partners of the Project, as well as at the International level.
- Two thematic Workshops, aimed at favoring the exchange of information between PASCAL experts and PhD students, Post-Docs and young researchers on specific topics of the PASCAL workscope, reinforcing scientific networking and fostering synergies:
Participation to all these events will be free of charge, and stimulated within all European organizations.
To complement education and building on the knowledge bases that will be provided – also thanks to the educational programme of PASCAL – actual training opportunities are provided in Task 5.2, to leverage the unique combination of experimental and theoretical/ computational activities focused on the key safety-related aspects of heavy-liquid-metal-cooled reactors.
A dedicated mobility programme is foreseen, offering financial support to students and young researchers involved in the technical topics covered by PASCAL, to allow hands-on training by joining the expert groups dealing with the related experimental and/or analytical activities. The possibility of getting involved into activities side-to-side with renowned experts, and directly accessing state-of-the-art facilities and tools could multiply the effectiveness of training and foster collaborations at European level.
Maximizing the dissemination and communication of the results is a priority in PASCAL: to this aim, Task 5.3 will produce, enforce and maintain a Plan for Exploitation and Dissemination of PASCAL’s Results (PEDR), based on:
- the identification of the main stakeholders (scientific, technical, institutional and also general public) and the possible means of communications to reach them;
- the definition of the engagement phases in line with the aimed messages to be delivered;
- the dissemination channels (conferences, workshop, technical events, scientific journals) through which the partners can disseminate the results of the project;
- the creation of a visual identity of the Project, i.e., presentation and document templates to be adopted by partners for any dissemination initiative;
- the identification of possible collaborations with existing European and International initiatives in the framework of Lead-cooled Fast Reactor technology (GIF, SNETP, IAEA, ESNII, OECD/NEA).
PASCAL will yield a substantial amount of knowledge that has to be properly treated. According to the procedures set out in the Quality Plan (WP6) and following the inspiring principle of data that should be FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable), the Task will deal with all activities required for the proper management and long-term preservation of the knowledge generated in PASCAL:
- formatting all data ccording to international standards and best practices, and as much as practicable with backward compatibility with previously generated data of the same type, to facilitate their immediate as well as far-termed access;
- ensuring the actual usability by collecting and maintaining together in a single package the results along with the description of the associated facility and test section, as well as the specific boundary/ initial conditions;
- storing all Project outcomes in a dedicated repository aligned to the quality assurance standards enforced by the Quality Plan, and made accessible to the public according to the associated level of confidentiality.
The maximization of the exploitation of the PASCAL’s results is another key priority in order to produce a strong and long-term impact. For this, Task 5.5 is devoted to enforcing the PEDR set out in Task 5.3 to correctly exploit the outcomes of the Project in all the fields of relevance, such as industry, higher education and research. In particular, the exploitation part of the PEDR will include:
- the categorization of the results and their connection to possible users, such as
- research organizations (research institutions, universities, …) at the forefront of R&D for LFRs that will benefit from the creation of experimental databases and modeling development,
- industry and SMEs involved in the development of LFR designs and in general investing on the LFR technology,
- GIF committees interested,
- regulators;
- the deployment of measures and actions to allow internal and external partners to effectively exploit the results of the Project;
- the organization during the final Project meeting of specific discussions and roundtables devoted to the future use of the PASCAL results with partners and stakeholders.
The results exploitation will take advantage also from the dissemination activities and the knowledge management actions, creating a beneficial cooperation environment among the task 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5.
