– What is today’s level of our atomic science in comparison with our foreign colleagues? Did we miss a lot in the nineties?
– In Russia we really were witnessing some big pause in research and technology development. However this is fair for other countries as well. After the Chernobyl catastrophe the whole nuclear society got somewhat paralyzed, this can be said about all the countries like the US, France, Japan, South Korea. The “Nuclear Renaissance” began only a few years ago. Countries like China and India today are successfully developing nuclear technologies. Meanwhile Russia also has got some new opportunities. There are some spheres where we are still leaders and going to strengthen our positions. Thus, we are going much ahead in closed nuclear fuel cycle, for instance.
Until recently they believed that reusing SNF was something achievable only for the future generations, while for that time all we could do was store it. However it turned out that the future generation is, in fact, ourselves. Fast breeder reactors will help us to solve the problem. Russia at this point can boast some advanced experience and is doing good in proven application of technology (a wide range of sodium loop and fast neutron spectrum reactors).
Yet in the coming years, within the bounds of the “Proryv” (Breakthrough) project we decided to pass from demonstration of some innovative technologies to experimental-projection complex, realizing the CNFC (closed nuclear fuel cycle) general technology. Besides now we are open for cooperation – speaking for instance about NIIAR (The Scientific Research Institute of Nuclear Reactors) in Dimitrovgrad, – our colleagues were truly shocked, in a good sense of the word, with the high level of our experimental capability. It is in Dimitrovgrad where we today are designing a new multi-purpose fast neutron research reactor (MBIR). We are making this project international from its very start; we hope that it is to become one of the leading centers of the world’s scientific cooperation for joint studies, especially in the sphere of reactor material science.
– Was it worth while to reveal ourselves? Wouldn’t it have been more profitable to do the research somewhat sneakily?
– We don’t give out the technologies that we managed to achieve as a result of our own hard work. We make money, providing leading foreign scientists with high-technology service. What is most important: we agree that the results of the experiments are to be our joint property. That’s what matters for science, that’s what is the most valuable. Besides, it is really hard to obtain and comprehend on your own either fundamental discoveries or engineering technology concepts of some serious tasks, it is too much for any country. The lead world powers cooperate with each other, creating ITER (nuclear fusion reactor), working on the LHC (large hadron collider) and other projects, where scientists keep on looking for answers on fundamental scientific questions. What are other things we don’t know?
– It seems that the scientists have already answered the main questions of nuclear physics, haven’t they? Or they haven’t?
– Certainly, the majority of the scientists today are the ones doing applied research, turning fundamental knowledge to technologies. However this doesn’t mean that there is nothing much to do for theorists. There are still lots of things we don’t know about the world that surrounds us. For instance, we understand what passes to a substance at a temperature of million °C, while what happens with that of a billion °C, we don’t. As a matter of fact, those are exactly the conditions of the fusion reaction, that’s what happens on the sun. Besides, today the world science has only approached the problem of how to get and manage nanostructured materials. This field is extremely interesting.
For example, we can suggest theoretically that we are able to obtain high-temperature superconductivity, up to RT. Until recently this was possible only in liquid helium, which is very expensive and complicated. While now we already have solutions that allow us to achieve the effect of superconductivity at a liquid nitrogen temperature. We already can assume how profitable it will be to create, say, new transformers, generators, electric engines, energy accumulators. By 2016 we plan to take to development phase of design documentation for some types of electrical machinery. This may put the beginning of the new electrical engineering industry in Russia. What is important is that the Rowland Law someday might be “cancelled”, even for the RT. This will be a true revolution in electric appliance.
– Are there going to be anyone able to complete the revolution in other spheres as well? Since today many scientists are still there from the Soviet times. How does science change these days?
– Before, in order to solve some problem, should it be bomb making, or nuclear fuel, or reactor etc, they used to create a special institution. Then came a moment when a task was fulfilled, but the institutions remained. We needed to stop the non-constructive competition within the industry; moreover, the “competition of the infrastructure”. That’s why they decided to close some test basis in some of the institutions, while for the others Rosatom spent RUB 1.7 billion for its modernization. Within our new innovative program we are switching to the project principle of order placement: not to finance what the institutions might do, but what they have to do.
We place new tasks on the account of future demands of the market. Scientific groups are being created for particular projects. In 2008 we had 200 patents, while in 2012 the number increased to 420. However what really matters is “know-how”, the technologies behind those patents. Today at the “Skolkovo” business school the first 50 specialists are being prepared for working in engineering and manufacturing companies and will be able to task the designers and scientists properly. We created an educational consortium consisting of 14 higher educational institutions, straddling the whole country. Its task is to look for talented people, attract them to the nuclear sphere. We are really interested to have those young people work for us later, at our universities or enterprises.
Some our scientists already have their wages higher than that of managers, while the number of young scientists is increasing. As a matter of fact, the participation in international projects along with the opportunity to work abroad is an important part of the motivation. I’m not afraid they will go away. That’s what was happening a decade ago, when they failed to see any future for their work and life. Now there is future. Besides, it seems to me that the word Motherland these days again started meaning something.
