On 26 March 2025, TANDEM project partners gathered in Brussels and online for a workshop on stakeholder engagement. The workshop, arranged by nucleareurope, was facilitated by Jessica Johnson, nucleareurope Communications and Advocacy Director, as well as VTT’s Nina Wessberg and Merja Airola. Following a tour de table, TANDEM project coordinator Claire Vaglio-Gaudard gave an overview of the project, noting its objective to develop methodologies and tools to facilitate the safe and efficient integration of SMRs into smart low-carbon hybrid energy systems. She also presented the activities undertaken within the project, and detailed its working methodology.

The TANDEM project’s stakeholder engagement actions were then presented by VTT’s Merja Airola. She stressed that the project’s approach is to target specific groups of relevant stakeholders for each engagement activity.

As an example, she detailed two recent events organised by the project, the first was a resident event on the use of nuclear energy for district heating in Finland. It allowed for fruitful, constructive discussions between citizens, local authorities and nuclear energy experts. The second event was specifically focused on the topic of women in nuclear. It was aimed at better understanding the needs and concerns of women regarding nuclear energy. Merja highlighted that these two events have shown the benefits of holding two-way dialogues and targeted events.

Participants were then separated into breakout groups to discuss various key topics, such as their own experiences in terms of stakeholder engagement and the challenges they faced. They also discussed the nature and level of stakeholders to engage in the debate, brainstormed on potential ways to build and maintain trust and on engagement with specific audiences, such as women or immigrants.

As a conclusion to the workshop, participants discussed the outcomes of the breakout sessions, and outlined some stakeholder engagement policy recommendations for nuclear projects and specifically for SMRs. VTT’s Nina Wessberg then summed up the discussions and outlined the next steps for the project, noting that the inputs from the workshop will feed into the project’s policy briefs.