Belarus is in the process of building nuclear power generation with two reactors envisaged. Higher Education in Radiation Protection & Nuclear Safety Culture will be of utmost importance, hence appropriate curricula need to be developed and set in place. Cooperation of Belarusian Universities within this project is planned with 4 EU Universities:

• University of Hasselt
• University of Valencia
• Universität Mannheim
• University of Bologna

which are the Members of CHERNE Network and through them with all CHERNE partners. CHERNE Network attaches great attention to the highest standards of nuclear education in Europe and beyond its borders. Through the project CHERNE contributes to supporting Belarusian universities in development of Master program of high quality, training of academic staff in the «train-the-trainers» format, analyzing the content of the future Master program and making comments and recommendations. This feedback is important for harmonization of educational activity of Belarusian Universities according to the European educational standards.

Click here to go to the RADIUM website

In (medical) nuclear environments, engineers are operating or supervising/coaching workers during handling of strong and/or open sources in their daily practice. The ALARA principle forms the basis of their decisions, not only to evaluate the risks and consequences for their own operations but also for all others present in this environment. Therefore, training these skills is necessary but challenging. We will employ a virtual reality (VR) environment to accomplish a stepwise approach between theory and real practice. The ‘Virtual Nuclear Simulator’ (ViNuS) project aims to develop a flexible VR environment for master students nuclear engineering with an initial focus on 2 radiation protection cases:

• (1) nuclear decommissioning
• (2) nuclear medicine.

We will build scenarios on working with localized (open) sources and contaminated surfaces. Our system comprises off-the-self hardware and user-friendly software focusing on:

• (i) the generation of scenarios
• (ii) the speed and quality of rendering the virtual environment
• (iii) the interaction between users and the visual content.

Through a modular approach, we foresee the translation to other practices or target groups in the future.

The goal of the strategic partnership is to increase the knowledge sharing in radiation protection and safe use of radiation sources across the European countries. To achieve this, the project aims at improving the blended learning activities with new innovative educational approaches that enable and stimulate collaboration and can adapt quickly to current difficult circumstances using E- and M-learning combined with a safe offering of practices.

However, special attention is needed for the development of the soft skills using digital education not only from the point of view of competences but also for the wellbeing of the students. Bearing in mind this aspect, the current project aims to develop blended and remote teaching approaches in the form of educational collaborative games that are embedded in a strong learning environment.