How to achieve sustainable nuclear education and training – Examples of Success Stories from Chalmers University of Technology’s Ecosystem

Other conference contribution, 2026

Offering courses in nuclear engineering was challenging in some European countries during the last decade following the aftermaths of the Fukushima accident. With decreasing student enrollment, different initiatives were launched at Chalmers University of Technology, with the purpose of providing continued education and training in nuclear engineering, while being less vulnerable to variations in student interest. Thanks to the use of online and hybrid set-ups, different target audiences could be reached to guarantee a sufficient number of students. Several courses were created, each having different objectives in terms of course contents and corresponding target groups. The courses range from basic to advanced level, yet all courses
attract enough participants to be sustainable in the long run. Beyond flexibility in attendance, state-of-the-art pedagogical methods relying on flipped classrooms were implemented. Those methods resulted in high student performance on the courses and high student satisfaction. This paper presents the entire ecosystem of courses developed at Chalmers University of Technology during recent years. Three courses are also chosen as illustrative examples of such efforts: one basic course open to all having an engineering background, one MSc course primarily offered to Chalmers students, but also to non-Chalmers students, professionals and PhD students, and finally a set of advanced courses offered primarily to PhD and Post-Doc students and
professionals, but also to MSc/BSc students, from all over the world. The ecosystem of courses developed is well adapted to be scaled up for meeting the current growing needs in education and training.