GENERATION IV INTERNATIONAL FORUM EDUCATION AND TRAINING WEBINARS: EDUCATION TOOLS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION WORKFORCE

摘要

The Gen IV International Forum (GIF) Education and Training Task Force was created to respond to the challenge of not only forming, training and/or retaining qualified Gen IV workforce but also educating and informing a more general public, policy makers on topics related to Gen IV reactor systems and cross-cutting subjects. The task force serves as a platform to enhance open education and training as well as communication and networking in support of GIF, and its objectives are to maintain the know-how in this field, to increase the knowledge of new advanced concepts, and to avoid the loss of the knowledge and competences that could seriously and adversely affect the future of nuclear energy. While many countries are either ramping up or developing nuclear power production as an important step towards economic development and environmental protection, a decrease or uncertainty of the fiscal year budgets have left organizations and agencies looking for new avenues for training and educating a qualified workforce. This has led to an increase in those looking for readily available education and training resources. Using modern internet technologies, the GIF Education and Training Task Force has launched a webinar series on Gen IV systems in September 2016, which is accessible to a broad audience and is educating and strengthening the knowledge of participants in applications to advanced reactors. This achievement is the direct result of partnering with university professors and subject matter experts who conduct live webinars on a monthly basis. The live webinars are recorded and archived as an online educational resource to the public from the GIF website (www.gen-4.org). In addition, the webinars offer unprecedented opportunities for interdisciplinary crosslinking and collaboration in education and research. The GIF webinars, with their expansion of topics, targets a large spectrum of those that do not know but are desiring to learn about the many aspects of advanced reactor systems. The details and examples of the GIF webinar modules will be presented in our paper.