Objectives
Mission
The main goal of ACTINET is to contribute to the establishment of a “European Research Area” in the fields of Actinide physics, chemistry and geochemistry, thereby maintaining both research infrastructures and human expertise to the best level.
Objectives
ACTINET has a three-fold objective. It is related to: i) research infrastructures, ii) research programmes, and iii) education and training.
- A global European infrastructure policy is necessary in a context where the available tools are scarce resources, scattered among several institutes. Some facilities are redundant, while others are either missing or difficult to gain access to by academic researchers. It has been chosen to proceed step-by-step, starting by improving the accessibility of the major facilities to the scientific community, then optimising their utilisation at the European scale, and finally coordinating the future deployment of new facilities and instruments;
- Offering the access to major up-to-date experimental tools must be accompanied by the definition of shared ambitious research programmes, and by improved mobility between the involved institutions, in particular between academic institutions and national laboratories, in order to reduce the fragmentation of the European community of actinide sciences. The objective of the network is to stimulate and to support joint research projects proposed by member organisations. The support essentially consists of access to pooled facilities and funding for the mobility of researchers and radioactive samples.
- Enhanced mobility and availability of the infrastructures for joint research programmes will allow the next generation of actinide scientists and engineers to gain hands-on experience as part of their training. The objective is to coordinate and to increase the attractiveness of actinide sciences among European students. The network also supports a stronger participation of national laboratories in training at the universities, as well as a stronger use of facilities for teaching and training.
