Over the course of two weeks, 14 female nuclear industry specialists from 14 countries learned about Russian nuclear technology and the operation of nuclear and scientific facilities, and developed their professional and leadership skills. The IAEA program, named for the physicist who first explained nuclear fission, Lise Meitner, was developed in 2023 to encourage women to gain skills in the nuclear industry.
They toured several nuclear facilities in Moscow, Dubna, Obninsk, Electrostal, and Ubdomlya, and conducted projects in planning nuclear development for their countries, including the matter of which array of technologies would be most appropriate for their particular regions. According to Rosatom, the participants visited the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant, the Rosatom Technical Academy in Obninsk, the JINR scientific infrastructure, and the Machine-Building Plant, and also took part in virtual technical tours of the Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power plant and the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant.
The final day of the tour was spent at the ATOM Museum, where they received their final mentoring and defended their teams’ work during the course of the two weeks. The visit was arranged between the IAEA, the Rosatom Technical Academy, and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR).
Lise Meitner, an Austrian Jew, had worked with nuclear physicists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. When Hahn in 1938 discovered the anomalous production of barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons, he couldn’t determine the reason. Meitner, who was living in Sweden at the time, having fled Germany because of the Nazi threat, hypothesized that they had split the atom, the first known instance of nuclear fission. Further experiments by Meitner’s nephew, Otto Frisch, proved that that was the case. While Hahn received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1944 for his discovery, the key role of Meitner in hypothesizing and confirming the discovery was only recognized at a later date.
