The following short list gives a description of the ITU activities towards the Western Balkan countries:

• Serbia participated in a Workshop on “Experience in Combating Illicit Trafficking of Nuclear and Radioactive Materials” in Vilnius (2004).
• From November 6 - 9, 2006, IAEA and ITU jointly organised a training course for law enforcement, authorities and measurement experts on the development of a response plan to incidents involving nuclear or other radioactive material. The participants came from Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Europol. The training consisted of lectures, of "table top exercises", of hands-on training using measurement equipment and of a realistic exercise that was set up in collaboration with the FTU-FZK.
• In the framework of the policy of enlargement, ITU started in 2002 a Network of laboratories from the New Member States to work on the implementation of the Art. 35 and 36 of EURATOM Treaty. A workshop on "Radionuclides in the Environment and Foodstuff", organised on June 27-28 in Karlsruhe was attended by 30 participants from New Member States, Western Balkan countries (Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina) and Turkey. The results obtained from the measurements of soil sample collected during a field trial conducted in 2005 in the Slovak Republic, close to a Nuclear Power Plant that was affected by a nuclear accident were discussed. The Network discussed also the problematic of the determination of radionuclides in foodstuff as monitoring as well as in emergencies case.
• From June 12-15 the 4th Summer School on Actinide Science and Applications was held at ITU, co-sponsored by the ACTINET Network of Excellence. The programme consisted of morning lectures on general topics in actinide science and nuclear technology and afternoon demonstrations in the laboratories of ITU and in the German research centre FZK. The school was attended by 100 students, the average age being 29 years and almost equal gender balance was reached. The participants originated from as many as 28 countries, from Europe (1 participant coming from FYR of Macedonia)
• The course "Fundamentals and applications of Nuclear Science" introduces the basic concepts of nuclear science and technology and is suitable for participants from the nuclear industry, nuclear research organizations, universities, regulatory authorities and nuclear medicine institutes. Lectures are followed by a series of “hands-on” case studies based on the use of the Nuclides.net / NUCLEONICA web-based applications to give the user direct experience in the above areas. The course that was being held since 2003 twice a year, has being organised once a year in 2005 and 2006 in Slovenia having special incidence in the Balkan countries, and therefore with participation of students from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the FYR of Macedonia.

ITU has currently open calls for research fellowships - fellows can be nationals of EU Member States, Associated States, Associated Candidate Countries or must have resided in a country of the European Union for at least five years prior to the start of the fellowship.
Deadline for applications is September 30, 2007.
Further information on these calls is available from http://itu.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.php?id=96.

Contact:
Dr. Gabriele TAMBORINI
Press and Public Relations Officer
European Commission
Joint Research Centre
Institute for Transuranium Elements
gabriele.tamborini@ec.europa.eu
http://itu.jrc.ec.europa.eu