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General information about the national YG network

The Young Generation Switzerland (YG-CH) was founded in 1998 as a section of the Swiss Nuclear Society.

During the last couple of years, the YG-CH organised numerous interesting seminars which focused primarily on visiting nuclear related facilities and on the valuable information provided by corresponding facility staff.

These well attended seminars offered good opportunities for young people to meet peers. However, only loose contacts instead of a real “group feeling” were the result. Therefore, to foster the Young Generation not only as a formal body but as a movement, new ideas were needed. As a reaction to this circumstance, the Young Generation Project got born.

The Young Generation Project

The idea of the Young Generation Project is to gather young nuclear professionals to give them the opportunity to work together with a handful of senior or retired professionals with the goal to encourage inter-generation know-how exchange and to enhance their understanding of the nuclear field and its environment.

The first YG-Project was carried out in 2001. 14 participants of the YG, three mentors and three additional speakers contemplated on nuclear issues and each participant thereafter composed a short paper about one issue.

The Young Generation Project 2001 was considered a success by both, organizers and participants. Therefore, one has decided to organize an YG-Project every second year.

The follow up project in 2003 topped the 2001 event with 19 participants.

In the 2005 project 15 participants from 6 companies or organizations worked for 5.5 days on the 3 topics: “Nuclear energy and climate politics”, “Public relation” and “Generation IV”.

The topics were introduced during a kick off day by three mentors from the “older” generation, which supported the three working groups with their knowledge.

The participants then worked in three groups, each group on one of the above mentioned topics, during three self organized days. They had to get into the topic (participants were not allowed to work on a topic they are experts in), focus on a special topic and write a scientific paper and prepare a presentation. This was a hard goal, and only possible if the groups worked together.

Finally a meeting of 1.5 days was organized, starting with a seminar lecture about presentation methods. Then the groups had time to finish their presentations and papers on the first day. The convivial evening was the highlight for the networking. On the final day the groups had to present the work to the other groups and then participants elected the best presentation. The winning group itself elected a group member to present their work at the IYNC 2006. This was an award sponsored by the Swiss academy of technical science.

YG Project 2005 was a success. We could reach our goals and especially the networking was excellent in-between the single teams, because of the hard work, and in-between all participants and mentors, because of the final meeting.

The only upcoming problem is the number of young people in nuclear field. It was hard to get the minimum of 15 people to realize the project, because most of young generation people had already joint one of the former projects. A consequence of that will be that the next Swiss YG project will be organized 2010 at the earliest. Instead of the project Swiss YG will organize a 2.5 days seminar in 2007.