THE FUN RUN
Over 120 people participated in the Fun Run Sunday afternoon. The route along the Danube River wrapped through the town of Devin and the nearby castle. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and many residents of Devin were out enjoying the day. The sight of 120 young people running with matching t-shirts labeld "Youth, Future, Nuclear" created quite a stir among the locals, especially when the IYNC 2000 flag was waved about.

The official Fun Run winners are:
Women: First Place -Anna Saiapina
Second Place -Emmy Roos
Third Place -Alina Apyan

Men: First Place -Evgeny Stankovsky
Second Place -Anton Travleyev
Third Place -Alexandre Shiapakov

Congratulations to all our winners and to all our participants! And special thanks to our Fun Run sponsor, Arcadia Consulting.

During the run, several other IYNC participants chose to visit the castle Devin. The castle was originally constructed by the Romans, and dates back to approximately 864 AD. Participants enjoyed touring the castle and surrounding ruins.

THE WELCOME RECEPTION
The Welcome Reception was the first, non-athletic, event of the Congress and was held Sunday evening. The Mayor of Bratislava graciously allowed use of Primate's Palace, a palatial city building in downtown Bratislava. Short welcoming speeches were provided by Stanislav Rapavy, representing the Mayor of Bratislava, and J.E. Saulnier from the Welcome Reception sponsor, COGEMA. Beautiful music performed live by a local harpist accompanied the remainder of the evening of champagne served on silver trays and buffet tables filled with scrumptious food. The Welcome Reception was the perfect opportunity to meet Congress participants and prepare for the work of the meeting.

2-nd Day, April 10

OPENING PANEL
The meeting portion of the IYNC commenced with an opening panel of distinguished speakers. This panel included the presidents of the American, European, Indian, Korean, and Slovak Nuclear Societies, in addition to the Minister of the Ministry for Education and Science of the Slovak Republic, the Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Minister of the the Ministry of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation, and the President of FORATOM.

This panel presented a unique opportunity for an international view on the future of Nuclear Science and Technology, although agreement on all issues was not necessarily evident.

Further discussion of these topics will follow in a Y-notes session that will summarize the issues that were discussed during this session.

YG OPENING SESSION
Following the opening panel, participants learned of some of the international nuclear activities that are currently being conducted. M. Uematsu described an exciting movement to organize a Young Generation Network in Japan that is now in the developmental stages. G. Legradi also provided information about the Hungarian Young Generation Network. This group organized a public event in which educational contests were conducted to inform members of the public about nuclear science and technology. This was followed by a lively public debate between the nuclear groups and a member of a green organization, moderated by a popular rock star. This debate was followed by a public opinion poll that indicated 50% acceptance of nuclear power! During this session, we also heard from representatives of the young generation in Germany, France, and Russia. Participants expressed interest in learning aobut young generation programs internationally, whose experiences may assist in the development of young generation programs in their home countries.

NUCLEAR EDUCATION AND TRANSFER OF KNOW-HOW
During a session on Nuclear Education and Knowledge Transfer, the group discussed a major issue for the young generation: declining university engineering enrollments and the necessity to transfer knowledge from generation to generation. The nuclear industry is having to deal with a decline in students and education opportunities, as stated by Urs Meyer from the Nuclear Power Plant in Leibstadt, Switzerland. During this very lively session, it became clear that both the established industry and the young generation realize the value of having programs available to attract highly qualified young professionals. The young generation also accepted their responsibility to provide role models and mentors for the coming generation of children. Related to this is the problem of reserving existing information, as keynote speaker John Graham pointed out in his presentation. A lot of expert information is being destroyed or exists only in the heads of an aging population. It is therefore important to make the problem known by including it in technical conferences, and making sure that the young generation has access to older information and knows how to use it.

NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY I
In two sessions on Nuclear Technology the presenters showed that they are clearly in tune with the state of the art nuclear science and technology. In the field of the power industry, a number of new designs and research and development projects were presented. Keynote speaker Andy Kadak was right on the mark when he stated the requirements for new nuclear technology saying that "the plants must be competitive, they must be demonstrably safe, they must be proliferation resistant and they must exist in the current political climate". At least one of these requirements could be found in all other presentations in that session. Kadak gave an example of a project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: a small modular high temperature helium cooled turbine peddle bed reactor producing 100Mwe. A point was made later in that session, that it is important to involve politicians early on in the research and development stage of these projects. Katrien Van Tichelen, of SCK/CEN in Belgium, presented a project that followed this approach: the MYRRHA project, which focuses on the design, development and realization of a modular and flexible irradiation facility based on accelerator-driven systems.

Y-NOTE SESSIONS
At the end of the day, immediately after the sessions had finished, a small group of people for each session met to draw some conclusions on what had happened in the sessions that day. This group consisted of the chair of the session, some of the presenters, and a few representatives from the audience. In these "Y note sessions", the group would recapture and discuss what was said during the meeting, and try to draw some lessons learned from it. For those who wanted to relax a bit instead, there was an opportunity to watch some student and young generation movies. These were movies about nuclear science and technology, made by school students from Bratislava.

Y-Note Sessions Result

DISCOTEQUE
After working hard all day (the Y note sessions went on till 9:00 PM), it was time to play hard. For that evening, the organizers had organized a party in a disco. All participants could meet in a relaxed and fun atmosphere. Participants would either get to know each other a bit better over a glass of beer or wine, or XXX in the bar, or, for those who were still up to it, dance the night away.

3-d Day, April 11

POLITICAL ASPECTS
The second day of the conference started with a session on political aspects of nuclear science and technology. In this session, nuclear policies throughout the world, and more specifically non-proliferation and plutonium disposition issues, were discussed.

NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY II
In this second session on nuclear technology, in parallel with a session on political aspects of nuclear science and technology, speakers told of applications in global space communication, the field of medicine, both in diagnosis and therapy, and applications to agriculture, manufacture, environmental protection and research. The speakers spanned the globe, coming from Argentina, Belgium, Russia and Austria. These non-power applications very often get less recognition by a large part of the industry and the general public. As keynote speaker A.K. Padhy, from the IAEA in Vienna stated: "People around the world today are deeply concerned about the dangers posed by nuclear weapons, and some remain skeptical about the safety of nuclear power, but most are unaware of the many positive contributions that nuclear science and technology are making to everyday life". He continued saying that "if wise use of science in future is to be assured, key applications for everyday use need to be better understood, not only by decision makers, but by the people whose whole lives they touch".

ENVIRONMENT & SAFETY
Presentations on existing safety and environmental programs in operating plants like Bohunice preceded discussion on the clean-up of cold war wastes in Russia and the possibility of accelerator assisted disposal of high level waste from civil power programs. The participants understood that they had inherited a legacy of issues from the old generation which required their attention. While Marco Cepin of Slovenia spoke of improvements in test and maintenance planning through probability theory, Tony Hechanova spoke of the latest US ideas of transmutation of some species of dangerous waste to harmless isotopes.

COMMUNICATION & PUBLIC PERCEPTION I+II
In two consecutive sessions on Communication and Public Perception, the importance of clear and honest information was mentioned more than once. It became clear that even though different cultures have to deal with slightly different types of problems in nuclear technology, the cause of the public perception problem and the approach to solve it through communication seems to be the same everywhere. A Hungarian teacher, Istvan Lazar and his pupil Istvan Cziegler, representing the RAD Lauder Laboratory in Hungary, demonstrated the importance of experimentation as opposed to simulations, through a school project on in-house radon levels. In a question and answer style, they spoke of the high school's long term initiative in investigating the effects of radon in Hungarian homes. This project had for eight years provided practical understanding of the existence and effects of natural radiation. Moreover the results of their research was fully in accord with results found elsewhere. Both the presentation and the ideas presented were first rate. Some papers covered new subjects. To most participants, the topic of improving public acceptance through memetic engineering, presented Jeremy Whitlock of the Canadian Nuclear Society, was a completely new approach. J.E. Saulnier of Cogema presented the French approach to transparency in creating an internet site with web cams to show what was going on in the company 24 hours a day, was also considered an unexpected way of saying: "we have nothing to hide". The most controversial presentation in this session, shown by the wealth of questions from the audience afterwards, was given by Ann MacLachlan, European bureau chief for Nucleonics Week. She created quite a stir by stating that "journalists don't need education, communication is OK, but information is better", and by stressing the importance of trust.

Y-NOTE SESSIONS
Just like on Monday, at the end of this day of sessions, another series of "Y note sessions" took place, in which all the information that was given during the day was recaptured and discussed.

Y-Note Sessions Result

EVENING
In the evening, no events were planned, so that participants had the opportunity to go out on their own to visit Bratislava and to enjoy the Slovakian cuisine and beers.

4-th Day, April 12

ECONOMICS
In the Economics session, participants talked about how one must continue to improve the economies of nuclear power to make nuclear power an economically viable alternative. Antoine Van de Velde of Siemens AG talked of the significant role of advanced nuclear fuel technologies in improvign nuclear power plant operation. He stated that "although the cost of nuclear fuel fabrication only amounts to around 10% of the fuel costs, advancements in nuclear fuel technology are the key factor to cost savings and efficiency enhancement in the entire nuclear fuel cycle". He went on to point out that further developments in nuclear fuel technology are therefore focused not only on the reduction of fuel fabrication costs, but primarily on the by far greater savings potential which can be tapped in the uranium supply sector, and in the management and disposal of spent fuel.

When evaluating the economics associated with nuclear power, it was quickly demonstrated that there is a large variance between countries. For example, the availability of resources within a country impact the economics when the needs for self-sustainability, security of supply, and dependable resource availability are considered. Also, each country faces a unique environmental situation and level of urgency to meet environmental targets. Only when these country-specific factors are considered can a complete economic picture be developed.

NUCLEAR PROGRAMS AND TECHNICAL COOPERATION
In the course of the "Nuclear Programs and Technical Cooperation" session, it was ascertained that cooperation of the young generation working in the nuclear field in different parts of the world is necessary right now. It should stimulate the development of nuclear programs directed to peaceful applications.

FUEL CYCLE CHALLENGE
The options of open and closed fuel cycle have been considered. At present, the situation in several countries is not favorable to closure of fuel cycle due to high capital investment costs and low cost of natural uranium. But recycling of nuclear material is indispensable, not only for the effective use of valuable resources but also to reduce the debt which we may leave to the next generations. Many developments in advanced reprocessing technologies have been carried out in several countries to deal with the diversification of nuclear fuels. Cost effectiveness and waste- free processing are increasingly important factors in the recycling policy.

The problem of nuclear wastes treatment was discussed at the "Fuel Cycle" session. Hesitation of the authorities responsible for high-level radioactive waste disposal is a negative influence on the perception of the nuclear fuel cycle by the public. The treatment of wastes is being constantly improved with the development of technologies. This progress should be highlighted in the press to communicate it to the public.

MEDIA TRAINING WORKSHOP
Emmy Roos of Rocky Mountain Remediation Services showed the participants just what it takes to be prepared to deal with the media through an interactive media training workshop. "It is a matter of having both the right attitude and the right knowledge, the Yin and the Yang", as Roos put it. She explained how every interaction with the media should be taken very seriously, no matter how trivial the subject or how limited the exposure. Roos also taught the participants some basic things one needs to know about the media in order to understand how they operate and how articles come about. One of them was that the media are established as businesses with their own objectives, their own owners and their own stockholders. The group discussed the three types of interview: TV, radio and print. They learnt how they differed in presenting one's image, what time limits there were and whether you can be sure that what you say is what is heard by the public. She went on to discuss the interview and the preparation needed to avoid surprises, how to select the best company representative and a variety of points to consider. She explained how to set our goals for the success of the interview by developing a Prioritized List of the points that had to be made while considering what questions the host might ask based on the type of interview. Know a lot, memorize a little (just key items) of the message you want to leave and, then, relax. She gave lots of practical tips from guidelines on what to wear to how to keep track of time to make sure that your points were made in time. At the end of the first part of the workshop, all participants were given a company's imaginary scenario and were asked to prepare themselves for a critical interview in the second part, by a professional journalist, Keith Miller of the Slovak Spectator, an international weekly. Miller knew the different scenario's and had, in addition further information that was true in some scenarios and false in others. The interviews themselves were very educational, both through very successful and less successful ones. After each interview the group discussed what went right and what went wrong and Miller gave his professional input.

INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE MEETING
After a few days of interacting with representatives of many diverse cultures, each country sent a representative to an International Committee meeting. Rarely do so many countries have the opportunity to speak together, and to determine a common mission and goal. After introducing him/herself, each delegate relayed his or her overall impression of the congress. The overwhelming consensus was that IYNC had been a success, but all hoped that it would not stop at merely a single meeting. Everyone expressed a strong desire to maintain contact with delegates from the other countries represented at the table, and to broaden those contacts to a larger number of countries in the future. Delegates came with a common mission: to promote the use of nuclear science technology throughout the world and to effectively transfer knowledge of nuclear science across generations and across international boundaries. Several expressed an urgency to take what we learned in Bratislava a step further - to take action in our convictions by making the technical aspects of nuclear technology accessible to all, by inviting members of environmental groups to future meetings to educate them on the importance of nuclear technology, and by producing a large media event to publicize the fact that young people ARE supportive of nuclear technology and that we ARE NOT willing to watch decades of knowledge and experience disappear as the older generation begins to retire. This international forum was unique. It was vibrant and energetic. It was an opportunity to share ideas and experiences. The success of IYNC in gathering a truly international group of young people could be the cornerstone to the future life of the nuclear industry, if we choose to build on it by turning ideas into action.

CLOSING SESSION - Y NOTES RESTITUTION
Following the technical sessions on Wednesday afternoon, a general session was held to provide completion to the technical component of IYNC. Because not all participants were able to contribute to the to the individual Y Note sessions, the outcome of each technical session was summarized in a forum attended by all participants. This offered all conference attendees an opportunity for comment and revision.

From these discussions some participants indicated that not only were they intending to write articles to their local media groups upon returning from the congress, but that some already had! Everyone was excited about what had been accomplished, and many were ready to begin planning what IYNC could accomplish in the years before the next congress would be held.

Y-Note Sessions Result

FAREWELL DINNER
After three long days of meetings, one would expect an exhausted group, ready to turn in early. Not so with this enthusiastic group of young professionals. This group saw the success of the week as an opportunity to celebrate - and to dance the night away. The Farewell Dinner was held at the Mammoth Restaurant, whose name tells all - this beer hall is the largest in Central Europe, and it is located right in the heart of Bratislava. Dinner began with beer and pretzels, followed by a hearty meal and, of course, another beer or two. With all the energy in the air, no one could stay at a single table. The place was alive with activity! People mingled among various tables to relate good times and stories with others they had only recently met, but had kindled unique friendships. Awards were announced for the best posters and presentations in each of the categories - everyone seemed to agree that all the presentations were worthy of award, and those receiving them were honored indeed. Most exciting of all, the host for the second International Youth Nuclear Congress in 2002 was announced. South Korea eagerly accepted the honor of hosting the next Congress, and pledged to build on what was learned at the Congress in Bratislava.

5-th Day, April 13

TECHNICAL TOURS - BOHUNICE AND MOCHOVCE
A few conference goers spent an extra day to experience nuclear engineering in action in Slovakia. Two groups were formed, one heading to the Bohunice Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) and Radioactive Waste Treatment Center; the other headed off to the Mochovce Nuclear Power Plant and the Mochovce National Low and Intermediate Level RAW Repository. All were pleased with the hospitality of the Slovak organizers, and were pleased to learn about operations of a Slovak NPP. I was a member of the Mochovce group. After all 25 or so of us made it through security, we were off to see how things worked at a Slovak nuclear power plant. We were even allowed to enter the control room to observe daily plant operations. Since the trip was a full day affair, lunch was provided by each of the power plants. )

SPECIAL SLOVAK EVENING
After a long day of trips to the power plants, or, for some, a long day of sightseeing in Bratislava, conference participants were ready for another evening of food, fun, and friendship. This evening took us to a winery in Limbach, a town near Bratislava. Here we were treated to traditional Slovak fare, and we were entertained by a traditional Slovak musical group. The wine was exquisite - we were told that most people outside of Slovakia don't know the quality of Slovak wine because it is usually consumed before it makes it out of the country. The food was enjoyed so much that stragglers were left with only bread - no leftovers here! We filled the entire restaurant, even pouring outside into the cool night air. Much like the previous evening at the farewell dinner, those of us from IYNC danced and dined until the restaurant closed, making the final evening of IYNC very enjoyable to all.

6-th Day, April 14

IAEA
On Friday, April 14 a small delegation traveled to IAEA headquarters to meet with supporters of International Youth Nuclear activities. The first stop was a meeting with Deputy Director General Victor Morougov. Mr.Mourogov provided his views into the future of nuclear science and technology and was interested in the successes of the Congress. We were very pleased to see that he had already read about the Congress in a nuclear publication, a very remarkable turn-around time. We presented Mr. Mourgov with IYNC memorabilia and had a prime photo opportunity.

Throughout the day's meetings, IAEA repeatedly supported the activities of IYNC as we discussed ideas for increasing participation from developing countries and ways to further communication between meetings. The support of IAEA is instrumental to making IYNC a truly International organization.