Nuclear industry veterans from Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia and the Czech Republic met in Trnava and Prague to celebrate the 60th anniversary of civil nuclear cooperation between the USSR and former Czechoslovakia and discuss top joint projects in this field. 

Members of the International Union of Veterans of Nuclear Energy and Industry visited VUJE, a design company in Trnava, where Russian veterans were awarded by the host. In Slovakia, the delegation took part in the Secure Energy Supply 2015 international conference. In the Czech Republic, the veterans visited the Dukovany NPP operating Russian-designed VVER-440 reactors, and the Nuclear Research Institute in Řež. 

In its turn, Rosatom handed out its honorary awards to Slovak and Czech nuclear industry veterans, teachers and researchers for their contribution to the international nuclear cooperation, power industry and nuclear physics. 

At present, nuclear components and technologies developed by Slovak and Czech engineering companies are well known on the global scale and supplied to many countries. Today’s success is based on the Treaty on Mutual Assistance in Developing Nuclear Physics and Nuclear Power for Economic Needs made between the CSSR and USSR on 24 April 1955. Right after the Treaty was signed, Czechoslovakia founded the Institute of Nuclear Physics (currently the Nuclear Research Institute (UJV) Řež). In September 1955, Charles University in Prague established a Faculty of Technical and Nuclear Physics, which was reorganized in 1959 into the Faculty of Nuclear Engineering and Physics with Czech Technical University in Prague. In 1958, the CSSR began construction of its first A1 nuclear power plant in Jaslovské Bohunice (now Slovakia).