ENEN Past Achievements and Future Challenges: ten years of European E&T actions in nuclear engineering, waste management and radiation protection

The European Nuclear Education Network Association, whose mission is the preservation and further development of expertise in the nuclear fields by higher education and training, has recently celebrated its 10th Birthday (September 22, 2013). During the last decade the Association was established as a spin-off of a European Project, took off and gained momentum, acquiring a huge number of member Institutions (presently in the range 60 - 70). Several European projects were run in this period under the coordination of the Association or with its active cooperation, leading to tangible results in terms of mutual recognition of curricula, of the establishment of the European Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering certification, of organising PhD Events and of contacts among Member Institutions, thus favouring student and teacher exchanges. Part of this effort was spent in order to address non-European Countries, aiming at enlarging the cooperation already established at the European level with several MoUs and practical agreements. In particular, in these years ENEN actively participated in several Euratom Fission Training Schemes (EFTS) and coordinated contributions coming from its Members to better achieve mutual recognition and harmonisation of their high level studies. The initial focus on Nuclear Engineering broadened to include also the fields of waste management and radiation protection, providing full scope educational opportunities in the nuclear sector and making use of the European Credit Transfer system (ECTS) to promote curricula establishment and recognition. Training was also added to the classical educational core business of academic institutions, involving industry and training centres in the development of curricula for specific target groups of professionals to be employed in the nuclear sector. This lead towards the adoption of the European Credit system for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET) and to implement the latest approaches in detailing learning outcomes of courses at the level of knowledge, skills and attitudes (competences). The initiatives of the Members during these years also involved the use of instruments developed to favour borderless mobility and high level education and training, including the Erasmus scheme and KIC-InnoEnergy. Moving beyond education and training towards information actions, the recently started NUSHARE project (Sharing & Growing Nuclear Safety Culture Competence) has the aim to respond to the need, underlined by two EC Commissioners, to develop and implement Education, Training and Information (ETI) programmes aimed at strengthening safety culture in the nuclear sector and at sharing relevant best practices at the European level. This represents a very ambitious goal that the ENEN Association will face in the coming years, in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident. The paper reports about the lesson learned by the work performed so far, about the challenges and the successes obtained in the various activities, drawing conclusions and discussing about the future actions to be made by the ENEN Association in its service to European citizens.