Alexander Rimsky-Korsakov, research manager of Radium Institute

— Rosatom should support science

On Oct 11 the State Duma approved the first reading of a bill on the establishment of Rosatom state corporation.

The bill stipulates the establishment of a state corporation, which is supposed to replace the Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy, to unite the civil and military sectors of the nuclear industry and to ensure its stable work. The Corporation will comprise Atomenergoprom holding and the federal state unitary enterprises owned by the Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy, i.e. the nuclear weapons complex, research institutes and nuclear and radiation safety agencies. The Corporation will be subsidized by the Government and special reserve funds.
 
“The bill should clearly specify the role and the status of research institutes in the united state corporation.”

“Since science will also be part of the corporation, it should get part of the profit the latter will have. Until now, the designers of new technologies have had no access to the money the user companies earned due to their products.”

“There is one more important aspect: the technologies our research institutes are designing today can be used in production in no earlier than 20 years. Besides, our industry is quite specific and we cannot sell our products worldwide. That’s why Rosatom state corporation will have to solve that problem and to support science at that period. We also need an effective mechanism for protecting our technologies. The mechanism we have had so far was poor. The Soviet technologies were copied worldwide because the Soviet authorities refused to join the World Patent System.”

“Recently, Mr. Kiriyenko said that after 2015 the government will stop financing the construction of nuclear power plants because the industry will have enough money to sponsor the projects itself. It is true. The technologies we have today will serve for 10–15 years, at shortest. And if we have enough uranium – and Mr. Kiriyenko is actively working to secure uranium supplies – we will be able to produce electricity “in old fashion” for 10–15 more years. For us, researchers, the key task of the state corporation is to form demand for the technologies that will be introduced in 10–15 years. We have various projects. We have plenty of financial and intellectual resources. But we don’t know which of our products will be used in production. We need specific demand so we know what we can offer. Only then we will know where we are moving. ”