Nuno Pessoa Barradas, a researcher at Instituto Superior Técnico – Loures campus, was honoured this year by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for exceptional service during Ukraine Support Mission, at one of its nuclear power plants. The mission aimed to help ensure the nuclear safety and security of all of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants during the ongoing military conflict.
The researcher volunteered for this mission, which lasted around four weeks and joined the IAEA as an employee of the Department of Nuclear Sciences and Engineering between 2017 and February of this year. He was the only Portuguese to receive this honour. After the mission, he returned to Técnico to resume his research activity, also joining the Loures campus Management Board.
Nuno Pessoa Barradas has extensive experience as supervisor of the Portuguese Research Reactor. ‘This experience allowed me to win an international competition to join the IAEA as a specialist in Research Reactors, which gave me the confidence to volunteer for the mission, since I had some familiarity and knowledge of nuclear reactors, although a nuclear power plant is much larger than a research reactor’, he explains.
‘Contributing to what must have been one of the IAEA’s most important missions ever was undoubtedly one of the best things I’ve done in my life,’ the researcher says. ‘Despite frequent air raid alarms, living conditions were good, and there were no prolonged blackouts or actual attacks near the plant while I was there’, he recalls. “People are people everywhere, with families, disrupted lives, and uncertain futures. Everyone is affected.”
Upon Ukraine’s request for assistance in 2022, the IAEA developed a concrete and detailed technical plan for safety and security assistance to Ukraine’s nuclear facilities and activities involving radioactive sources in various locations on the territory where the military conflict between Ukraine and Russia is taking place, including Chernobyl, Zaporizhzhya and the other Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
