The Kurchatov Institute is to be a new centre for national innovation.
In 2008 and 2009, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev signed decrees that were further supported by government resolutions on establishing a new National Research Centre, the "Kurchatov Institute." The first Russian National Research Centre's structure, staff, and financing have been constantly discussed. However, it has already become clear that the centre will be subordinate neither to the Ministry of Education and Science, nor the Russian Academy of Sciences, nor Rosatom, but exclusively to the government. This fact illustrates the special role that the centre will have to play in modernization and the development of an innovation economy.
Yesterday, Vladimir Putin held a meeting, where the accomplishment of decrees and resolutions topped the agenda.
The Kurchatov Institute is a successor of the well-known N2 Laboratory, where the nuclear project, comprising all bombs, reactors, nuclear power plants, icebreakers, and submarines, was launched. The International Thermonuclear Reactor, destined to save the planet from the energy crisis, was created here as well. It was decided in autumn that three more institutes that used to be part of other agencies, would contribute to the Kurchatov Institute, thus becoming the state managed.
These are the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI), owned by the Russian Academy of Sciences and Rosatom, the Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Protvino, and the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) in Moscow. The acquisition went smoothly, and according to some rumors, the Russian Academy of Science must be happy that it did not lose other institutes belonging to it. Rosatom, in its turn, is more interested in money, paying little attention to fundamental science.
IHEP owns the U-70 proton accelerator, which used to be the world's largest. Apart from it, IHEP played an immense role in constructing CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The former ITEP's N3 Laboratory built Europe's first heavy water reactor and is involved in constructing the electro-nuclear neutron generator. PNPI is preparing to launch the high-flux PIK reactor, which has been under construction since 1978, making it the most long-lasting uncompleted project in international science history, although it is still the world's best. Yury Osipov, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that from the moment he took the post in 1991, the reactor had been his headache. But it won't be bothering him any more, because from now on, it will be the direct prerogative of the government to launch it. The Kurchatov Institute has a synchrotron radiation source, a couple of reactors, and tokamak, a prototype of a thermonuclear reactor, operating there. NBIC centre, one of the world's best, was opened here in 2009, and it promises to come up with a new scientific revolution that will overshadow the previous ones. Thus, the National Centre will cover all perspective areas of nuclear physics.
According to Mikhail Kovalchuk, Director of the National Research Centre Kurchatov Institute, the Centre was designed to unify all these institutions toward mutual goals in which revolutionary innovations can be expected. Mr. Kovalchuk, who suggested establishing the National Centre, describing it as megascience, convinced the supreme authority that it was necessary to concentrate resources and recreate what once was known as Minsredmash (ministry of nuclear power engineering), which turned the USSR into a world leader in the field during the 1950s. The Kurchatov Institute, being part of the generously financed nanotechnology project, can become a structure similar to the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the government counts on it for making a revolution in modernization.
By Sergey Leskov
