Welcome to our BEST Course in Summer 2023!

8th to 16th of August 2023

About the course

With increased electrification and more strict environmental goals, we need more energy. As pollution from petroleum and coal fuels is corrupting our environment it is our responsibility to brighten our future. This journey will take a lot of effort and heroes in our society to explore and learn about alternative routes to generate energy. Nuclear power is a continuous effort to generate energy safely and creating innovative solutions to deal with the waste. 

Course content:  

• Basic concepts of nuclear physics

• Nuclear power generation

• Nuclear safety

• Nuclear systems in the future

• Laboratory session – Measuring ionizing radiation

• Project work

As a bonus to what you will learn during the course, you will also get to experience the Swedish culture – everything from eating fermented fish ("surströmming") to spending time in the middle of the ancient Swedish forest and taking a swim in a lake. 

So if you are curious about nuclear power and also want to get to know Swedish culture - APPLY! 

Together we can power up the world!

How to apply

1. Go to https://best.eu.org/courses/list.jsp

2. Find the Uppsala course

3. Apply between 12th of February and 12th of March.
   Your application should be written as a motivational letter (MoL). You can read tips and tricks for writing a MoL on the website and you can also ask your local BEST group for help. The MoL should be written directly in the text boxes. Most students decide to apply during the last day of the application period, which usually makes the site crash and some students lose the opportunity to apply due to this. Therefore, we highly recommend that you 1. write your MoL in a document on our computer and then copy-paste the text to the application page (or else you will lose your text when the site crashes); and 2. that you apply several days before application deadline.

4. In order to apply to a course, you will need to create an account on the BEST website. To make sure that only students at universities where there is a BEST group applies, you need to get your account validated. You need to contact your Local BEST Group with a proof of studies at the university as soon as you create your account so that they can validate it. The deadline for validation is 15th of March, so make sure to contact them several days before this deadline.

5. Wait for the results to come out and log in to confirm that you want your place in the course if ou are accepted.

Course fee

On the arrival day you will be asked to pay a course fee. This should be paid in cash and therefore we ask you to have this prepared. The fee is accepted in Euros or in Swedish currency. BEST-member countries are divided into five categories and depending on where you come from, you pay a different amount. Students from countries in category 1 pay the full fee, which is 45 Euros. Students from countries in category 2 pay 80% of the fee. Students from countries in category 3 pay 60% of the fee. Students from countries in category 4 pay 40% of the fee and students from countries in category 5 pay 20% of the fee. This fee system is common for all BEST courses.

Category 1: Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands
Category 2: Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom
Category 3: Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Turkey
Category 4: Greece, Montenegro, Russia
Category 5: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, North Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine

Deposit

When you are selected for a course, you have to pay a deposit to your Local BEST Group (LBG). The deposit should be paid no later than 12th o f April. Your LBG will hold it until after the course evaluation period has ended (28th of September). If all goes well during the course and you fill the evaluation, you will get back your deposit. If all goes well during the course, but you do not fill the evaluation, you will only get half of your deposit back. If you make damages during the course that amount to higher values than the deposit covers, you will have to pay the surplus to the LBG that organizes the course.

Find more information in the Never alone guide.

You need to contact your LBG and request your deposit back when you have filled the evaluation, but no later than 1-3 days after the evaluation deadline - otherwise, you may not get back your deposit.

Below, you can find the deposits per category.

Category 1: 60 €
Category 2: 50 €
Category 3: 40 €
Category 4: 30 €
Category 5: 20 €