STUDENTS AND LECTURERS FROM NUBIP VISITED WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY

The delegation from National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NUBiP) consists of 20 students from faculty of Plant Protection, Biotechnologies and Ecology and Law Faculty together with coordinators Vita Strokal and Nataliya Bilyera visited Wageningen university (WUR) since 2d till 10th July 2017. The visit was a continuation of a two-weeks workshop on the topic “Radioactivity and nuclear power” which was organized by NUBiP and WUR for the 9th time.

Wageningen universitity today is the leading European university in agriculture, system analysis and environmental politics in the world. Therefore, visiting this university was very interesting for NUBiP students. Especially, they appreciated the elements of study process in WUR, which was not familiar for them.

The program of this workshop was very intensive and includes lectures, practical classes, intercultural communication, group work and several social events.
At their lectures scientists and professors Dick Kers, Wim C. Turkenburg, Patricia Bekhuis and Jaap Hart told the students on the prospective of nuclear power, consequences of Fukushima incident, technological aspects of nuclear energy, types of reactors, the ways of waste fuel disposal and the influence on radiation on humans. All the lectures were very well mixed with fruitful discussions.

The practical part was held at RIKITL – the main scientific center, which controls the food quality including radionuclides contamination throughout the whole Netherlands. Students have mastered water and grass sampling techniques, sampling preparations and radionuclides measurement. Besides, the students did the mesuarement of radionuclide content in food samples – milk, mushrooms and flour. The most difficult but interesting task was radionuclides detection by distinguishing between the ray types (alpha, beta or gamma) and their insensitivity.

The intercultural communication part aimed to teach students of different nationalities (Ukrainian, Dutch and German) to take into account cultural differences and reach comfortable and fruitful communication between them. According to the student feedback, the information they got at intercultural communication classes helped them with better understanding and faster adaptation for multicultural environment, what is of high importance in a global world.

The group work is very typical for WUR students, but only a few NUBiP students used to practice it in their study in Ukraine. Nevertheless, our students involved into this activity very fast and contributed to the groupwork. It should be noticed that all group had their own room equipped with PCs and blackboard.

Each out of ten groups presented its projects at the last day of workshop. The topics of presentations were diverse: from radioactivity measurements and its impact on ecosystems to public opinion and international rights in nuclear power. The best project was presented by group 5 (Tetiana Khanachivska, Lotte van der Velde, Vitalii Bohaievskyi, Michiel van de Glind) on the topic on public opinion on nuclear power and got the prize. It should be mentioned that the majority of projects has been done very well.

Final dinner and awards by certificates of participation was the logic continuation of two-week workshop.

Additionally, there were several social activities during our visit: potluck dinner and foto game. For potluck dinner Dutch and Ukrainian students prepared their national food together and served it for all participants. The task of foto game was to create a story in own group pictures and present it at final dinner.

Nataliya Bilyera,
Associate Professor of Radiobiology
and Radioecology Department