foreword

The conference "Nuclear Energy for New Europe" attempts to address the prospects of nuclear energy in present and future Europe. Increasing electricity consumption, global warming, security of supply, all these issues contribute to the so-called nuclear renaissance. Nuclear renaissance was also the leading theme of this year's conference in Portorož which was attended by 172 participants from 22 countries. The technical part of the program was complemented by an afternoon trip to the countryside around Portorož. This and other social activities stimulated the friendly and productive atmosphere at the conference.

The editorial activities of these Proceedings started in January 2007 with Call for papers and 128 abstracts were submitted by May. A Program Committee meeting was held in June in Ljubljana where the program of the conference was outlined. Invited lecturers covered a wide range of topics from present challenges to future nuclear power systems – Gen IV reactors and fusion power plants. Contributed papers also presented a variety of new scientific, technical and operational results. Around one third of contributions were presented orally and others as posters. Each paper was reviewed by two referees before being included in the Proceedings.

Following the tradition of previous meetings, award was given for the best paper prepared by first author aged no more than 32 years. Ten young authors participated in the contest and the Award for Young Authors was presented to:


Miroslav Babić, Slovenia for the paper
CFD Spray Simulations for Nuclear Reactor Safety Applications with Lagrangian Approach for Droplet Modelling

(co-authored by Ivo Kljenak and Borut Mavko)
 

David Palko, Sweden for the paper

Theoretical and Numerical Study of Heat Transfer Deterioration in HPLWR

(co-authored by Henryk Anglart)

 

This year the Best Poster Award was introduced in appreciation of excellence in poster presentation. The award was given to poster entitled:

"Using Safety Margins for a German Seismic PRA" by R. Obenland, T. Bloem, W. Tietsch, J.-B. Sing.

We take this opportunity to express our gratitude to our sponsors who contributed to the success of the meeting. Ms. Saša Bobič, Ms. Tanja Klopčič and Ms. Urška Turšič gave us outstanding administrative support. We would also like to acknowledge the dedication and hard work of all reviewers and the members of the Organization Committee.

Ljubljana, December 2007