RRFM 2009 Transactions - European Nuclear Society

namely Jozef Stefan Institute TRIGA, Ljubljana; Czech Technical University SPARROW-1
(CTU, Prague); and Training Reactor of Budapest Technical University to participate in the
future co-operation.
Subsequently, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the institutions which
participated in the meeting, as well by the three other research reactor institutions in the
Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovenia that were invited to join after the January 2008
meeting.
Areas of Cooperation and Collaboration
The discussion at the Budapest meeting also agreed on the necessity of exchanging
operational and other experiences in regard to spent fuel management and return of spent
fuel to the country of origin. The participants thus focused on future enhanced cooperation to
increase reactor utilization. The following main conclusions were reached:
In education and training field, it was noted that the European Nuclear Education Network
(ENEN, www.enen-assoc.org) already plays a key role, as well as the Nuclear European
Platform for Training and University Organizations (NEPTUNO,
http://www.sckcen.be/neptuno/). Low-power research reactors are especially well-suited for
many training activities, while such activities are not as easily accommodated in higher
power research reactors. The smaller reactors may also serve as preparatory sites to
develop advanced measurements and other methods development for larger reactors. On
the other hand, the larger reactors are open for helping the education and training services
offered by ENEN. However, interesting ideas on new types of training courses and on
coordinating various existing courses were discussed, and it was agreed that there are
interesting possibilities for coalition activity in this area.
Co-operation in the field of neutron beam experiments appeared to be the most promising
area to be organised. Though neutron beam experiments are performed at most of the
participating reactors, the user system applied at the Budapest Neutron Centre (BNC) was
accepted as good practice. The participants agreed to develop similar systems at each
reactor and then to merge them if practicable. The participants also discussed the possibility
to co-operate in the marketing of such reactor services by using harmonised web-pages
describing experimental equipment capabilities, reactor utilisation and also by other means.
A related issue is harmonisation of instrument developments at the co-operating reactors.
The harmonisation process should aim at improving services and also at jointly developing
tools to be used as preparatory instruments of future ESS experiments.
Irradiation of materials and fuel/PIE. The parties pointed out that, since irradiation and PIE
activities are generally organised as contract-based activities, co-operation in this field
seems to be more complicated. Nevertheless, it was decided that information on the
available and planned services should be collected for joint marketing purposes. It is
desirable to find appropriate research targets for an open co-operation in this field that may
be later continued at JHR.
Regarding isotope production, although the topic was raised, the participants did not discuss
potential co-operation in this field during the initial meeting, instead they agreed to postpone
this issue to the 2nd meeting of EERRI.
2.2. 2 nd Meeting – Vienna, September 4-5, 2008
The purpose of the meeting held in at the Atominstitut in Vienna September 4-5, 2008, was
to strengthen implementation of the EERRI coalition and to review action items defined at the
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