SCIENTISTS ANSWER TAISIA KOROTKOVA'S QUESTIONS

SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL (SNF) & WORK AT THE INSTITUTE OF THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS (ITEP)

T.K.: With regard to SNF - are there any ofﬁcial sources that report the quantity of SNF imported onto the territory of the Russian Federation and stored here? How accurate can we regard this information as being, and how accurate are the ﬁgures provided by Greenpeace and other ecological protection organizations?
E.Sh.: Rosatom are fairly honest in that sense. It's just that some of the information can't be revealed as they're objectively state secrets. After Chemobyl, the safety of atomic energy was instituted, it was raised to a higher level than all the rest. That's a fact that everyone has recognized. After Chernobyl, to this day, there hasn't been a serious accident. In America and France that happens every other year. And that's without even mentioning Fukushima, a wreck.
T.K.: Is there a limit on SNF imported into the country?
E.Sh.: There may be. But it's not really about a limit, it's about the capacity of the factories to process and store SNF. A major program has been adopted by Rosatom, it's called Breakthrough, and it's aimed at “buming off” the SNF in special reactors. Then its volume and level of activity is considerably reduced.
T.K.: How long should nuclear waste (what remains from the processing) be stored under total control for, and is there a 100-percent safe way to store it?
E.Sh.: Nothing is ever 100 percent ))). There's always a probability. Right now the safest method is to seal the SNF in a thick layer of glass and then to store it in deep, old mines shaft (in seismically safe sites). It's stored until the complete decomposition of the SNF, which should take place in about 10,000 years. Breakthrough and its European alternative, MYRRHA, shorten that period down to several hundred years.
T.K. What's wet and dry storage, in brief?
E.Sh.: Literally, it's storage in water or in the air, in enclosed containers.
T.K.: What are your predictions for the development of the sector?
E.Sh.: The quantity of atomic energy generated is just going to increase. That's because only the Americans have managed to achieve a lower kilowatt-hour cost (that's through the use of wind turbines and shale fuel, which is very bad for the ecology). In the rest of the world, atomic energy is the cheapest and most ecological (!). We mustn't forget the damage from CO2 where hydrocarbons oil and gas are burnt and from emissions of radioactive radon in the buming of coal (China, Ukraine...) There are interesting ideas regarding small scale energy. There are reactors the size of fridges. They're even installed on satellites and submarines. You could put one on the back of a track, but then you have the issue of non-proliferation.Thermonuclear energy is on the horizon. That's at the R&D stage for now, though. There are still a lot of technological problems.
T.K.: What developments are underway, and in which countries are they most advanced in this sphere?
E.Sh.: As I said, in Russia we have Breakthrough. In Europe there's MYRRHA.
T.K.: How proﬁtable is this sector?
E.Sh.: That I don't know. But I think it's about 3-7%. It's very science and capital intensive. But through the large volumes of turnover, in absolute terms it works out as billions of dollars.
T.K.: With regard to ITEP — why don't you work there anymore? You don't have to answer if you don't want to.
E.Sh.: The answer can be found in the questions that follow))) To put it brieﬂy, with my colleagues at the laboratory, we were just about able to develop a new, interesting idea. The scale was considerably smaller than the Hadron Collider. It was all done for fairly modest amounts of money, and effectively from whatever we found to hand, stuff that had been carefully stored and cared for by the older generation from the Soviet era. The result was that we received an instruction to create in the laboratory a microscopic piece of the material that (we propose) a neutron star is composed of. They're extinct stars with vast densities. Imagine that the Sun is compressed to the size of the Earth, or the Earth is contained within the volume of a football. With that kind of density, you don't have the usual atoms or cores or protons and neutrons. The material is in the condition that it was in the ﬁrst billionth of a second after the Big Bang, only it's very cold. But in order to conﬁrm the results received and to discover this super-dense material, you need to manufacture serious detectors. In total, several hundred million rubles were required for 5 to 8 years. We didn't have that kind of money, of course, and our bureaucrats ask two standard questions: l) Why do we need science, if we've got oil? 2)When there will be a retum on our investment? So basically the project stalled.
T.K. What's happening in the former Soviet and now Russian physics research institutes?
E.Sh.: In the sphere of fundamental physics, nothing serious. It's a very banal problem — there's no money. Nobody in the country‘s leadership understands why we have to look for the Higgs boson. Everyone who's stayed here is working for abroad. They make detectors for the West, they go on working trips to service their detectors. Only the theorists have maintained a high level. And it's actually a very high level! Many of them are right at the top of the Hersh index, and so on. And that conﬁrms a rule — there's only enough money for paper and pencils. The only exception is the United Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna. There the only fundamental physics project in Russia is being developed — the NIKA. In terms of its scale, it's comparable with one of the experiments at the Hadron Collider. But there aren't a lot of fresh scientiﬁc ideas there, they're trying to repeat westem experiments. You have to understand that the UINR is an intemational organization, analogous to CERN. The “real” money, to a large extent, comes from abroad.
T.K.: Are government resources allocated for the experimental base, or is there a shortage in resources for scientiﬁc developments?
E.Sh.: For the experimental base, which is to say for accelerators, the “hardware”, the electronics — almost nothing is allocated.
T.K. : In the age of the Hadron Collider, how timely are national experimental programs in the ﬁeld of fundamental physics?
E.Sh.: They're very timely! If we don't create full-scale experiments in the country, all of the specialists will go abroad, and the youngsters won 't see any examples of interesting science for themselves, they won't even study physics. Competencies will be lost, scientiﬁc schools, the scientiﬁc environment (that's an important thing!), the ability to organize and implement experiments. That's what happened in the 1990s.
T.K.: Is there still a link that runs between the institute and work in a Russian research institute and an ability to make, if not important discoveries, then at least developments on discoveries as was the case during the Soviet era?
E.Sh.: No, that ability doesn't exist, and that's why the whole link has broken down.
T.K.: Has the situation surrounding the brain drain at the end of the 1980s and the 1990s improved over the last 15 years?
E. Sh.: It's changed! Everyone's either already left or they've gone into business ))). Some, of course, have remained. As I said, there are some very strong theorists. But the situation is very bad where experimenters are concerned.
T.K.: And, of course, there's a separate, important issue: where are the most state resources being allocated, as far as physics is concemed? As far as I can see, during the Soviet era, vast volumes of resources were invested in the development of advanced weapons and the space program, but now?
E.Sh.: Unfortunately, a lot of the state resources don't get through to the physicists. Applied physics isn't doing too badly: there are orders from industry, from Rosatom, and so on. But fundamental physics... Who's going to allocate l0 billion dollars to the study of the X-boson or the quark-gluon now? And you can't do anything with smaller amounts.

THE FUNCTIONING OF RESEARCH INSTITUTES ON THE TERRITORY OF RUSSIA

P.G.: Hi! I've prepared answers to the questions.
T.K.: What is happening in the former Soviet and now Russian physics research institutes?
P.G.: The property of the Russian research institutes (within the departments of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences) is now managed by the Federal Agency of Scientiﬁc Organizations (FANO). FANO has been tasked with increasing the effectiveness of the use of budget resources and the assets of the scientiﬁc organizations under its jurisdiction. The time for the carrying out of reforms really has come at the Academy of Sciences. The large quantity of area at institutes is used, to put it mildly, ineﬂiciently or not for its intended purpose. Nevertheless, there is a fear that “effective management” on the part of people who don‘t really understand science will bring unfortunate results. I think time will tell. In my experience at Moscow State University, I can say that MSU deﬁnitely needs reforms. Speciﬁcally, there has to be a change in the administrative, management personnel every 5 years. In addition, there have to be age limits for the personnel in the senior management posts (the rector, the dean, the faculty heads, and so on). Otherwise, there can't be any development.
T.K.: Are state resources allocated for the experimental base, or is there a shortage of resources for scientiﬁc developments?
P.G.: There's deﬁnitely a shortage. The main problem is the subjective evaluation of the expert commissions of core departments (the Education and Science Ministry, the Russian Scientiﬁc Fund, the Fund for Fundamental Research, and so on). For example, a scientiﬁc project can have a good rating from external experts, but be rejected on a decision of the institution‘s internal commission.
T.K.: In the age of the Large Hadron Collider, to what extent are national experimental programs needed in the sphere of fundamental physics?
P.G.: There should be more international programs. Unfortunately, there are in fact fewer and fewer as a result of recent political incidents...
T.K.: Is there still a link that runs between the institute and work in a Russian research institute and an ability to make, if not important discoveries, then at least developments on discoveries as was the case during the Soviet era?
P.G.: No! Unfortunately, at the Russian research institutes at the present time there are very few real discoveries taking place. For the most part, scientists who have worked in American or European laboratories are having successes.
T.K.: Has the situation surrounding the brain drain at the end of the 1980s and the 1990s improved over the last 15 years?
P.G.: It's probably decreased. Two factors have had an impact. Firstly, the fall in the quality of the personnel trained. Secondly, the ﬁnancial has in reality improved.
T.K.: What's your assessment of the state of fundamental physics in Russia relative to Europe and America?
P.G.: It's very bad! In Russia, fundamental research is supported by one fund — the RFBR. Unfortunately, the amounts allocated by that fund are very small. For example, 600,000 rubles for a two-year project))).
T.K.: And, of course, there's a separate, important issue: Where are the largest amounts of state resources being allocated, as far as physics is concemed? As far as I can see, during the Soviet era, vast volumes of resources were invested in the development of advanced weapons and the space program, but now?
P.G.: Over the last year we've seen a return to a tilt in the direction of the defense industry. A great deal of signiﬁcance is placed on the ﬁnancing of developments that can eliminate the need for imports.
T.K.: Thank you for your answers!

DEVELOPMENT OF A DRY STORAGE FACILITY

K.S.: Hi Tasya!
Of course, I'd be delighted to answer your questions, as I worked on the development of the “dry” storage facility for Krasnoyarsk (Zheleznogorsk). I'll write in detail. For the storage of SNF in the Russian Federation special temporary storage facilities have been built for use prior to the ﬁnal burial or processing. The SNF can be divided into two groups — SNF RBMK (Leningradskaya, Kurskaya and Smolenskaya atomic power stations) and SNF VVER. The SNF from the Leningradskaya and Kurskaya stations arrives at a dry modular-chamber storage facility in Zheleznogorsk. The total volume of SNF RBMK is 24,000 tons. Prior to that, the SNF is stored in exposure tanks (wet facilities) at the station itself, and then in secure metal-concrete containers for transport to the dry storage facility. The SNF VVER (water-moderated water-cooled reactors) now, as previously, is transported to wet storage in Zheleznogorsk, and then after being held there for 10 to 15 years it will be transferred to dry storage. Fuel from Ukraine was also brought to the Russian Federation, as by law SNF has to be returned to the country that produced that fuel. Similarly, fuel from the countries of the fonner Soviet bloc where reactors were built of the same type as our Russian reactors and for which fuel was imported from the Russian Federation.

In the work of the atomic power stations, in the various storage facilities, in the extracting of uranium and so on, in medical institutions, in specialised research institutes, various wastes are produced — low-activity, medium-activity and high-activity waste. The wastes can be liquids or solids. There's a range of ways they can be processed with the aim of reducing their volume, the level of their activity and getting them into a state allowing for their secure storage in special containers and sites for that purpose. A series of research institutes in Moscow, Petersburg and our closed cities are working on issues relating to the utilization and reduction in volume and activity of those wastes.