In achieving its overall aim, CONNECT-NM has curated a series of tailored and specific objectives, organised along five distinct research lines:

• Research line 1: Knowledge and data management
  • Specific objective: To create the conditions for nuclear materials data to be correctly collected and stored, so as to be fruitfully analysed and used.
• Research line 2: Advanced materials developing and manufacturing
  • Specific objective: To reduce drastically the time required to improve, develop and potentially discover new or advanced nuclear materials, along with designing and progressing advanced manufacturing processes.
• Research line 3: Materials and component qualification – testing, standardisation and design rules
  • Specific objective: To accelerate the qualification of nuclear materials for safe operation.
• Research line 4: Non-destructive examination and materials health monitoring
  • Specific objective: To enables safer and more efficient management of the lifetime of nuclear components.
• Research line 5: Advanced materials modelling and characterisation
  • Specific objective: To improve the capability to predict the behaviour of nuclear materials in operation.

As many countries, including European ones, move forward in expanding their nuclear capacity, such efforts need to increasingly be aligned with a continuous improvement of sustainability in energy production. Against this backdrop, CONNECT-NM is expected to provide the tools and knowledge to enable each European country to maintain the desired and needed nuclear capacity and, depending on national policies and priorities, to develop advanced nuclear systems, towards ever increasing sustainability.

Building on this, it is clear that an evolving nuclear ecosystem has been emerging in the last few years, exemplified by a blooming of startups in Europe putting forward a number of new innovative and advanced nuclear reactor concepts. Importantly, almost all of these enterprises are looking for advanced materials to validate their concept. In this framework, CONNECT-NM can help by providing the needed skills and expertise, while creating a connection with infrastructures and standardisation bodies, so as to allow these companies to accelerate their proof of concept, similarly to what is already being done outside Europe.

CONNECT-NM is explicitly designed to be transformational, by pursuing a ground-breaking change of paradigm in nuclear materials science. Advanced and innovative materials, with better performance and higher sustainability features, are considered indeed to play a crucial role in the green and digital transition.

Through its core research activities related to nuclear materials, the CONNECT-NM co-funded European partnership is striving towards maximising impact across Europe in a number of prominent and wide-ranging areas:

• Promote significant innovation and technological advancement in the field, fostering the development and eligibility of new materials solutions and manufacturing processes.
• Establish a paradigm shift, as well as a culture of continuous improvement, in materials science, supporting the growth of sustainable practices within the nuclear industry.
• Support the long-term sustainability of nuclear energy by prioritising safety and reliable operation, not only enabling its widespread use, but also overcoming current reluctance in several countries.
• Contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe.

More specifically, each of the five research lines, through which the partnership focuses the majority of its efforts, can be directly linked to a distinct, expected final product:

As CONNECT-NM advances towards strengthening European research and innovation in nuclear materials, the partnership’s core work is structured along the following eight distinct Work Packages:

Work Package 1 (WP1): Coordination and Daily Management

The main objective of CONNECT-NM’s first work package is to ensure the Partnership’s proficient management, ensuring both an efficient administrative environment and effective governance system. The launching and monitoring of open calls within the partnership also falls into the responsibilities of this work stream. Further key WP1 tasks include the revision of the strategic research agenda in the field, as well as the consideration of aspects of gender dimension and attention to ethics requirements.

Work Package 2 (WP2): Education, Training, Mobility and Access to Infrastructures

This work package is primarily dedicated to the organisation and monitoring of education, training and mobility activities within the partnership, as well as to establish and maintain a framework for providing access for participants to scientific infrastructures in the field.

Work Package 3 (WP3): Communication, Dissemination and Result Exploitation

The overall aim of the third work package focuses on both increasing the visibility and supporting the impact of the CONNECT NM Partnership. Building on this, the core sub-objectives of this work package include:

• Effectively communicating the ongoing work and results of the project to key stakeholders, encompassing industry, research, academia, and policy networks.
• Promoting the dissemination of the project findings through the CONNECT-NM website, scientific publications, and presentations at webinars, workshops and conferences.
• Fostering advice and services aimed at enhancing the impact and exploitation potential of projects funded by CONNECT-NM, notably under the guidance of experts in innovation and results exploitation from industrial and entrepreneurial fields.

Work Package 4 (WP4): Nuclear materials knowledge and data management

This work package seeks to coordinate the activities of CONNECT-NM for the development of a data management methodology, to be adopted by all the research lines to allow for the establishment of a Nuclear Materials Knowledge Organisation System (NM-KOS).

Work Package 5 (WP5): Advanced materials development and manufacturing

The partnership’s fifth work package aims to:

• Pave the way for the creation of a potential nuclear material acceleration platform (MAP) in Europe, fostering more efficient methodologies which would enable the process of materials discovery and development to become significantly faster and more sustainable.
• Develop innovative materials solutions to improve the design of structural components, core components, advanced fuel elements or concrete structures in current or future nuclear reactor technologies.
• Explore and extend practical applications of advanced manufacturing processes.

Work Package 6 (WP6): Materials and component qualification – testing, standardisation and design rules

The central objective of this work-package revolves around identifying methods to accelerate material qualification. This includes both evaluating, developing and implementing Accelerated Qualification Paths (AQPs), as well as integrating, coordinating and operating test facilities under joint ‘Test-Beds’ (TBs) to carry out the qualification in a realistic time-frame.

Work Package 7 (WP7): Non-destructive examination and materials health monitoring

CONNECT-NM’s seventh work package primarily aims to develop intelligent materials health monitoring systems to predict material properties over the whole component lifecycle. Importantly, the work of this project section will help to:

• Improve knowledge about how nuclear materials behave at high temperature and in conditions of strong degradation.
• Develop and improve methodologies for predicting materials behaviour, set to be applicable under an increasingly wide range of operational conditions.
• Boost sustainability aspects, providing tools that allow for reduced test cycles and requirements, subsequently limiting radioactive waste.

Work Package 8 (WP8): Advanced materials modelling and characterisation

The main objective of the final work package of the partnership is centred on the development and improvement of advanced predictive methodologies for nuclear materials behaviour in the areas of structural metals of the primary and secondary circuits, ceramic fuel materials and concrete materials of containments and biological shields. Its ultimate ambition also relates to increasing sustainability, primarily through improved modelling and characterisation methods.

At the core of CONNECT-NM’s governance structure is the decisional body of the partnership, namely the General Assembly (GeA), in which all Beneficiaries are represented with one member.

Building on this, the body responsible for executing the decisions of the General Assembly, as well as the proposal of procedures and solutions and the overall correct functioning of the partnership, is the Executive Board (ExB), composed of all work package leaders, both from transversal work packages and research lines, as well as the Coordinator. In addition, each work package leader, with the assistance of advisors and collaborators, manages the key tasks within their corresponding work package, ensuring timely implementation and adherence to protocols and procedures, as well as tracking progress and providing revisions.  Moreover, the Management Support Office (MSO) acts as a transversal body, providing assistance for the daily functioning of the partnership.

CONNECT-NM is also made-up of two main advisory bodies, the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) and the Innovation and Exploitation Group (IEG). The SAB, comprised of internationally recognised experts in the scientific and technical field of materials for nuclear energy, will monitor the projects of CONNECT-NM, while also providing input to the governance bodies concerning operational and strategic issues affecting the scientific and technical orientation of the Partnership. Additionally, the IEG’s primary responsibility will be to offer advice and/or services aimed at enhancing the exploitation potential of projects funded by CONNECT-NM, as well as to report back to the Executive Board and the General Assembly of CONNECT-NM concerning strategic orientations in order to boost innovation. The involvement of two advisory groups is a specificity of this partnership, in which the creation of the IEG stems from strong industrial involvement and interest in the partnership’s activities.

Moreover, the Evaluation Committee (EvaCo) plays a critical role in the CONNECT-NM projects by managing the proposal evaluation process. Their primary focus is to facilitate a fair and transparent evaluation process, ensuring robust decision-making without requiring expertise in all specific areas. Its members are independent and impartial experts, collectively covering the entire spectrum of potential project activities (five research lines and four material classes, for a total of nine members). They are not involved in CONNECT-NM or related projects and may originate from countries outside Europe or be individuals not active in nuclear materials research. While EvaCo members do not directly review proposals, they ensure that each proposal is evaluated by at least three independent reviewers. They oversee the scoring, produce rankings (both by research line and globally), and resolve discrepancies or doubts through discussions with reviewers and proposers.

As part of the efforts toward external stakeholders, in the framework of Work Package 3, two additional advisory boards are foreseen. One with representatives of European regulatory bodies (Board of Regulators, BoR) and another with representatives from European technical safety organisations (Board of TSOs, BoTSO). Biannual meetings (hybrid, virtual or in person) of the BoR and the BoTSO will be organised to produce a concise document of recommendations for the partnership’s ongoing and further unfolding activities. Furthermore, final recommendations will be developed, enabling the change of paradigm in nuclear materials research and in the practice of TSOs beyond CONNECT-NM.