By the end of the year, Russia will have the most powerful high-flux reactor PIK in the world. The president of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" Mikhail Kovalchuk announced it today at the meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Denis Davydov has the details of the promising projects of one of the main and oldest research centers in the country.
The Kurchatov Institute is one of the main research centers in the country. They study robotics, genetic engineering, nuclear medicine, and, of course, the atom, with the studies of which the Kurchatov Institute began its work in the 40s.
Vladimir Putin: “We all know that the first nuclear reactors for civilian purposes were created in the Kurchatov Institute. If I'm not mistaken, in the 80s, it was the center where the Russian Internet was created. What does the Kurchatov Institute study now?
Mikhail Kovalchuk, President of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute": "We created the PIK center that has no analogs, the first-generation base. And we have strong studies in genetics. We have strong studies in mega-science".
The young physicist Igor Kurchatov wrote letters to Stalin and provided reasons for the country to have powerful nuclear weapons. Americans dropped bombs which destroyed every living thing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the sign "Only the beginning".
"If you don't have such weapons, there will be forces that will seek to bring our great Motherland to its knees".
The founder of the legendary institute wouldn't have imagined that his creation would work on artificial skin for people with severe burns or a supercomputer with enormous performance. It can carry out 300 trillion operations per second.
Mikhail Kovalchuk: "We joined the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. We're a member of the CERN and the ITER. We're full-fledged participants, and European science can't do without us".
The Kurchatov Institute today launches the main scientific long-term construction project — the neutron reactor PIK which the country has been building since the late 60s. The facility in Gatchina near St. Petersburg will allow doing unprecedented things — to monitor atoms in motion rather than just get static pictures.
Vladimir Putin: "How is the project in Gatchina?"
Mikhail Kovalchuk: "We've completed the first stage of the power start-up of the most powerful high-flux reactor PIK in the world on our site in Gatchina. That's the first point. Now, we're proceeding as planned. We work on it every day. And by the end of the year, if everything is alright, we're to complete everything planned. Russia will have one of the most powerful neutron research plants in the world".
Mikhail Kovalchuk told Vladimir Putin about the achievements of the German-Russian Interdisciplinary Science Center created on the initiative of the Kurchatov Institute. Without paying attention to political differences, scientists from the two countries successfully work for the benefit of humanity.
Denis Davydov, Elena Vinogradova, Yulia Shchedrova, and Natalia Gubina for Vesti.
