On 24 June 2010, the IAEA´s Nuclear Knowledge Management programme received the The Column of Knowledge award for 2010 from Knowledge Management Austria.
Presented by Andreas Brandner, Chief Executive of the Institute for Knowledge Management and of Knowledge Management Austria, the award commends the IAEA for its decade-long effort to preserve, distribute and improve nuclear knowledge in power generation, waste management, medicine, food, agriculture, resource management and scientific research.
In a keynote address at the award ceremony held at the Technical University of Vienna, Pier Roberto Danesi, former Director of the IAEA multidisciplinary laboratories at Seibersdorf, congratulated Yanko Yanev and his nuclear knowledge management team, stating, "The most important resource in the nuclear field is knowledge. The Nuclear Knowledge Management programme of the IAEA is a success story and has given important contributions to a world where the safe operation and maintenance of all nuclear facilities can be better guaranteed by sharing experience."
Background: Nuclear Knowledge Management at IAEA
Nuclear knowledge management at the IAEA started spontaneously when - with the slump in the popularity of nuclear power during the 90s - nuclear knowledge and experience risked being lost to later generations as nuclear experts retired or resigned and were not replaced. The Nuclear Knowledge Management programme at the IAEA is cross cutting, assisting the organization and Member States in recording and preserving nuclear data for science and industry and helping them to capture the tacit - or implicit - knowledge involved in much expertise, which should also be handed on to later generations.
Now - in the 21st century - the need for energy security and clean energy production has led to an increased global interest in nuclear power generation. Countries are starting to expand stalled nuclear programmes, and developing countries have become interested in using nuclear power. Nuclear knowledge management will have a huge role to play in developing the required legal, financial and technical infrastructure and the necessary expertise in order to introduce and then sustain nuclear power production. Appropriate and sufficient human resource development requires holistic nuclear knowledge management in order to succeed. Here, the IAEA is extremely useful because it looks at all facets of peaceful applications of nuclear energy.