The head of the Kurchatov Institute, the academic Mikhail Kovalchuk, is one of Russia's most eminent scientists and science policy makers. In the past, the Kurchatov Institute focused mostly on nuclear physics. But nowadays the scientific center is also conducting important research on nano- and biotechnology, all while developing new materials and medicines. It even operates a synchrotron.
Kurchatnik, as it's fondly called by the old guard, can now be used as a working and highly efficient model for reorganizing Russian scientific organizations. People there know how to scale up their experience throughout the country. Mikhail Kovalchuk is going to be featured on Afternoon Business Report hosted by Nailya Asker-Zade on Russia 24. The show will air at 10:15 am on Tuesday. Here's an excerpt from the program.
The abilities of this robot are amazing. Under human control, it can pick up a rock, move a huge piece of metal or hold an egg without breaking it. These boxes, or "hot cameras", as they are called here, are radiation experiment sites where scientists study the radiation resistance of different materials. Through a one-meter-thick lead glass, they can have a peek inside.
Although it's a bit unsettling to realize that the radiation level inside the box is several thousand times higher than all kinds of norms and standards. — How safe is it to be here? — It's absolutely safe. First, every factor is accounted for. Second, every person has a dosimeter on them. The environmental situation here is much better than in the city because its every parameter and aspect are controlled more rigorously. Do your employees get free milk, per custom? That's funny. Our employees get a lot of things. Yes, even meals. We've come a long way since the Soviet days of giving workers milk.
Today, Kurchatnik, as it's dubbed among scientists, is one of the largest scientific centers in the world. The Kurchatov Institute was built to serve the nuclear sector. All technologies available to the Ministry of Medium Machine Building Industry, which has now become Rosatom, came out of the Kurchatov Institute. It's our nuclear power industry, our fleet of icebreakers, our submarine fleet and so on.
The nuclear-powered icebreaker, Arktika, is the first in a new line of Arctic rigs. Discoveries by our scientists have made Russia a leader in the Arctic and beyond. What we are offering is a brand-new route connecting Europe to the East, through the Northern Sea Route. It lies entirely within the borders of a single country, a country that can completely guarantee safe passage with its nuclear-powered icebreakers. Small stations are another joint project of the Kurchatov Institute and Rosatom. They are essentially nuclear batteries which can power a village or even a town, thus improving the conditions for military and civilian personnel in the Arctic.
After it gets delivered and installed, it can work for 15 to 20 years without any refueling. New sources of energy and medical solutions present great interest to the entire human race. The PIK reactor, a super-microscope of a sort, is intended to scan different materials. Being the most powerful in the world, it will hopefully help to find a cure for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, allergies and even cancer. At 100 MW, this reactor is the most powerful of its kind. There's a comparable reactor in Grenoble, France, but in a few years it's going to be taken out of service, and at that point this reactor will have no equivalent in the world.
All scientific breakthroughs, be it in material science or medicine, are made with the help of these monumental machines. The PIK reactor has a long history. Its assembly was started here, in Gatchina, back in the 70's, but after the Chernobyl disaster the project was put on hold. It wasn't until 2011 that construction was resumed. The reactor was successfully activated.
Now the megastructure is operating, as they say here, at zero power. It will become fully operational by the end of next year. Do you know what this is? It's a fuel rod. It's made of a special alloy with high radiation resistance, and it contains fuel — uranium pellets, basically. The reactor has about 4,000 of these small fuel rods inside. Together, they put out tremendous amounts of power. But let's get back to Moscow. This is a nuclear space engine. This is the kind of technology that makes sci-fi real.
To this day, a space flight is much like a cannonball ride of Baron Munchausen. The world's best engines today work for several minutes. They reach escape velocity, thereby putting a satellite into orbit, et cetera. But once the spacecraft is there, the engine shuts down. Imagine if we could keep maneuvering the spacecraft. Just sort of, swim around up there. We could choose an asteroid, for example, of a reasonable size, approach that asteroid, land on it, deploy a small nuclear power plant on it and turn the asteroid into a base for advancing into deep space, and so on. To do this, we need fundamentally different engines. And now we have them.
All the necessary calculations are performed on a supercomputer, a machine with almost unlimited potential, which processes huge bulks of data. It can perform up to 300 trillion operations per second. The supercomputer, in addition to the fact that it carries out communications, also supports all our international activities. And it also provides us with comprehensive calculations when we are working on a new reactor or spacecraft. It creates the digital model from the get go.
The thermonuclear reactor ITER in France, the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser in Hamburg — these are global research projects of a mega scale. And they would never have happened without a mega research center. For more than 70 years and counting, the Kurchatov Institute has been that mega research center.
