Educational Efforts in Nuclear Safeguards and Non-Proliferation at the European Commission, Joint Research Centre, in Collaboration with ESARDA (European Safeguards Research and Development Association)

Over the last almost two decades, the Nuclear Security Unit of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in close collaboration with the Training and Knowledge Management Working Group of the European Safeguards Research and Development Association (ESARDA) provides a yearly one-week well-established specialized course on safeguards and non-proliferation, which takes place in Ispra (Italy). The course is open to an average of 50 master degree students, in particular nuclear engineering students, but also to young professionals in nuclear regulations or operations and International Relations.The course is known best as the ’’ESARDA course’’ and aims at complementing not only nuclear engineering study programs by including nuclear safeguards and non-proliferation in the academic curriculum in Europe but also to contribute to efforts of international organization such as IAEA, JAEA, etc. to enhance and harmonize safeguards and non-proliferation approaches. Moreover, the course presents an overview on inspections techniques, ranging from non-destructive assay (NDA) to destructive assay (DA) techniques, containment and surveillance, information verification, satellite imaging, environmental sampling, etc. The course also addresses aspects of how to create the global and regional settings of nuclear non-proliferation systems, such as the Treaty on Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the EURATOM Treaty, and how they work in practice. This paper presents the experience gained during the ESARDA courses by also pointing out its evolution during these years. In fact, due to its success, the course has been reached out over several worldwide regions, thanks to the financial support of DG DEVCO under the ‘Instrument for Nuclear Safety Collaboration’. The paper also discusses the experience and feedback from the course in Pretoria (South Africa) in February 2018 with the participation of thirteen South African countries. The way the course was tailored to best-fit needs of the region and the intention to make it a sustainable initiative in the region will also be discussed.