figure a

The 19th Radiochemical Conference – RadChem 2022, was held in the Casino conference centre in Mariánské Lázně, Czech Republic, on the 15-20th May 2022. As usual, the conference was co-organized by the Czech Chemical Society, Ioannes Marcus Marci Spectroscopic Society, and Department of Nuclear Chemistry, Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague (DNC FNSPE CTU). Since 2010, the RadChem series has been organised on behalf of the Division of Nuclear and Radiochemistry of the European Chemical Society (DNRC EuChemS) – earlier the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences. RadChem 2022 was also sponsored by the Czech power generating company CEZ, UJV Rez, and the Centre of Advanced Applied Sciences (CAAS)—project granted by the MEYS CR and co-financed by the EU.

Soon after the previous conference, travel and face-to-face meetings were heavily restricted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the looming pandemic presented a challenge to the organisers and forced them to bet on the “hunger” of the scientific community to re-start the classical conference arrangement – live lectures, face-to-face discussions during coffee breaks and social events, and freedom to meet colleagues in the field. Shortly before the conference another event struck – a war conflict in Ukraine and the resulting restriction of access for Russian and Belorussian participants. Despite of all these obstacles, RadChem 2022 was organised and was the first on-site radiochemical conference held in Europe after the COVID-19 pandemic “wave”. Given the above unfortunate circumstances, the 220 participants from 26 countries registered at RadChem 2022 was obvious success. The most represented countries at RadChem 2022 were the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom; the usual participants from overseas, where the travel restrictions still persisted, were sorely missed.

In total, 212 contributions were presented at the meeting – 120 lectures, including 7 plenary and 16 invited, and 92 posters. The scientific programme was accomplished, except for the plenary lectures, in two parallel sessions. The programme of most of the sessions was opened with invited lectures. The poster presentations were organised into topical sessions and spread over three days to give the participants ample time for the discussion with the authors; the best posters were awarded in the Student Poster Competition.

RadChem 2022 was honoured by being selected as the host of the Hevesy Medal Award 2022 (HMA-2022) Ceremony. The medal and certificate were presented to Prof. Frank Rösch (for Laudation for him see [1] by the representatives of the Hevesy Medal Committee Prof. Amares Chatt (Chair, HMASP-2021–2022) and Dr. Zsolt Révay (Editor-in-Chief JRNC; Member, HMASP-2021–2022) [2] during the Sunday evening Opening session.

RadChem 2022 was also proud to host the EuChemS Division of Nuclear Chemistry annual meeting and the General Assembly of the European Network on Nuclear and Radiochemistry Education and Training (NRC Network).

The conference itself traditionally covered most of the topical issues in the field of nuclear- and radiochemistry in a total of nine sessions including:

Session

Organisers

Radionuclides in the environment, Radioecology

Pavel P. Povinec, Michal Fejgl

Nuclear analytical methods

Xiaolin Hou, Jan Kučera, Jan Kameník

Chemistry of Actinide and Trans-actinide Elements

Andreas Türler, Eva de Visser-Týnová

Radiation chemistry

Simon M. Pimblott, Mario Mariani, Václav Čuba,

Production and application of radionuclides

Antonia Denkova, Jiří Mizera

Separation methods and speciation

Andreas Geist, Jiří Janda

Chemistry of nuclear fuel cycle

Christian Ekberg, Václava Havlová

Radiopharmaceutical chemistry and labelled Compounds

Constantin Mamat, Ondřej Lebeda

Education

Clemens Walther, Mojmír Němec

Here we would like to thank all the Session Organisers and to the International Advisory Board for their help and support in RadChem 2022 organisation.

The full conference programme is available at the conference web page (http://www.radchem.cz), the booklet of all accepted abstracts was published as a special issue – Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 19th Radiochemical Conference – of the journal Czech Chemical Society Symposium Series and it is available (open access) at web address http://www.ccsss.cz/index.php/ccsss/issue/view/32 (issued 20.5.2022). Full texts of the contributions that have been selected based on the results of a standard double-blind peer-review procedure are collected in this issue of the Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry.

Every day after the demanding conference scientific programme, the participants could have enjoyed a rich social and cultural programme. Besides the Welcome Reception celebrating the Hevesy Medal Award on Sunday mentioned above, every evening played its specific role. The Beer Party on Monday evening presenting Czech cuisine and selection of local beers was well appreciated by participants. Undoubtedly, the cultural peak of this week social programme was the Tuesday night concert performed by Original Salon Orchestra of Mariánské Lázně. Traditionally, Wednesday afternoon was dedicated to trips to historical monuments and nature beauties of the surroundings of Mariánské Lázně. Depending on the selected trip, the participants visited the porcelain works of the Thun Company (Thun’s Porcelain and Museum), spa town Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) and its colonnades, Loket Castle, family brewery Chodovar, mining museum in Planá, or they could attend local hiking trip. Afterwards, all the participants met in the evening for a joint Conference dinner.

Thursday evening was traditionally dedicated to an amateur musician group composed of the conference participants who presented a folk-rock programme rehearsed on-site during the conference – RadChem Jam Band session. The evening was finished with Thursday night Singing Fountain performance at the spa colonnade.