Kovalchuk: the Soviet nuclear project still guarantees the existence of Russia
MOSCOW, 28 Sep - RIA Novosti. The strategically correct decision of the Soviet leadership and the advanced part of the scientific community to launch an atomic project, taken at the height of the Great Patriotic War, guarantees the existence of Russia as an independent power to this day, said Mikhail Kovalchuk, president of the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center.
On Thursday, Russia celebrates the Day of the Nuclear Industry Worker. On this day in 1942, the order of the USSR State Defense Committee "On the organization of work on uranium" was issued. The document prescribed the resumption of work in the Soviet Union to study the possibility of using atomic energy.
"We are alive today and are one of the few sovereign states only because during the hardest war the leadership of the country and part of the scientific community made the right strategic decisions that reformatted the world, made us the greatest superpower. And today we are such despite all attempts to destroy us," Kovalchuk stressed, speaking in Moscow at the opening of an exhibition dedicated to the "founding fathers" of the nuclear industry, legendary scientists Academician Igor Kurchatov and Anatoly Alexandrov. Under their leadership, in the 1920s and 1930s, the USSR carried out work on the physics of the atomic nucleus, the results of which laid the foundations for the future success of the Soviet atomic project, Kovalchuk noted.
Kurchatov, being the scientific director of the USSR atomic project, also guided Soviet intelligence to obtain specific materials about the American nuclear program. As a result, the timing of the creation of the first Soviet atomic bomb was significantly reduced, Kovalchuk added.
Kurchatov and Alexandrov were not competitors, but associates and associates, and after Kurchatov's death, it was Alexandrov who headed the Atomic Energy Institute, preserving the work of his colleague and friend, Kovalchuk noted. "Kurchatov and Alexandrov demonstrated the harmonization of elite relations. We must remember this and focus on this example," the scientist stressed.
The exhibition, organized under the auspices of the Kurchatov Institute, is held at the State Central Museum of Modern History of Russia. The exhibition, which occupies several large halls, presents photographs, documents and objects, as well as multimedia materials covering the main milestones of the Soviet atomic project – from the creation of the atomic bomb to the basics of peaceful nuclear energy, and different periods of work of Kurchatov and Alexandrov.
Kovalchuk spoke in detail about the exposition to the guests of honor, among whom were Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the Russian Historical Society Sergey Naryshkin, Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation Valery Falkov, Head of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Krasnikov.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Kurchatov Institute and the 120th anniversary of the birth of Kurchatov and Alexandrov.
The history of the National research Center "Kurchatov Institute" began on April 12, 1943, when an order was signed on the establishment of Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Igor Kurchatov (later the Laboratory of Measuring Instruments of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Russian Scientific Center "Kurchatov Institute").
The Kurchatov Institute has played a key role in ensuring the security of the country and the development of the most important strategic areas, including the development and creation of domestic nuclear weapons, nuclear submarine and surface fleets, nuclear energy. In the current century, as reported, the Kurchatov Institute participated in the creation of new models of Russian strategic weapons.
Initially organized for the creation of nuclear weapons, the Kurchatov Institute became the ancestor of many unique peaceful technologies, scientific directions, its employees solved urgent problems of fundamental physics. In 2010, the Kurchatov Institute received the status of a national research center. Today, the Kurchatov Institute is one of the world's leading scientific centers, an interdisciplinary Russian national laboratory.
SIC "Kurchatov Institute" is the main scientific organization of the federal scientific and technical program for the development of synchrotron and neutron research and the federal scientific and technical program for the development of genetic technologies. The Kurchatov Institute carries out scientific management of the comprehensive program "Development of equipment, technologies and scientific research in the field of nuclear energy use in the Russian Federation".
