NOMATEN WINTER SCHOOL 2021 (Paris, November 16-19) hosted by CEA

This first edition of the NOMATEN School programme has been deliberately organized physically in Paris – thanks to a slow down of the COVID-19 crisis in France, however with a reduced number of participants in order to fulfil restrictive criteria. Nevertheless,  about 50 people from Poland, Finland and France attended the School. The topic of this year's school was "Modelling of the materials behaviour under irradiation".

During this first part, 3 lectures focused on basic and fundamental reminders related to material and irradiation issue, concerning specifically the primary damage, the point defects formation, migration and properties and the concept of cascade. The second topic was dedicated to thermodynamics, diffusion and phase stability under irradiation. The last subject covered the mechanical aspects by introducing the plasticity at atoms scale, the motion of dislocations and the interactions of irradiation defects. Then two more applicative subjects related to the characterization and mechanical behavior were discussed: the use of nano-indentation to characterize irradiated materials (technique, applicfations and results) and the evaluation of the embrittlement of reactor pressure vessel (RPV) materials from Barsebäck nuclear power plant.

Another two sessions (2nd & 3rd days) were dedicated to scientific communications (total = 20) from CEA, VTT and NOMATEN/NCBJ researchers. In this part, a wide spectrum of topics were discussed ranging from i) the modelling of irradiated materials from molecular dynamics to nanoidentation, ii) the Machine Learning for atomistic materials science, iii) the application of calphad method to the multiscale modeling of plasticity with discrete dislocation dynamics, and iv) the use of micromechanical modeling as part of the Integrated computational materials engineering strategy for irradiated materials and v) the study of tritium trapping in fusion relevant materials.

Additionally, two poster sessions, during which about 20 students (PhD, post-docs from NOMATEN and CEA and VTT institutes) presented their research works, were organized. It should be underlined that one contribution was focused on challenges concerning industry partnerships and communication towards companies, science and public sector. The last day was devoted to visits at selected CEA Saclay facilities: i) the LECI hot laboratory and ii) the JANNuS-Saclay irradiation platform (both from the Division of Energies, DES) and the Molecular labeling and bio-organic chemistry unit (from the Division of Fondamental Research, DRF).