President-Elect Dmitry Medvedev visits Dubna Institute for Nuclear Research
President-Elect Dmitry Medvedev is now on a visit in Dubna, a city of physicists and nuclear researchers, which today ranks among the main leaders of the developing Russian innovation economy.
Before going to the meeting of the State Council Presidium, devoted to the development of the innovation system in Russia, Medvedev called at the legendary Dubna Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) which, besides everything else, has turned during the past three years into the “nucleus” of the local technology application-type special economic zone.
This erstwhile classified city, standing on the banks of the Volga River, which was formerly known for its biggest accelerator of elementary particles, accounts for fifty per cent of all the Soviet discoveries in nuclear physics. The institute’s outstanding scientific contribution was immortalised in the Mendeleyev Periodic Table where the 105th element is “Dubnium”.
The first place Medvedev wished to see within the premises of the International Scientific Centre, uniting eighteen countries, was the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, a global leader in the field of heavy and superheavy nuclear synthesis. Today, it is dealing with the problem of developing nanotechnologies. JINR officials explained that “semi-industrial samples of flexible printed- circuit cards for microelectronics and new-generation condensers were already developed at the laboratory with the help of ion-ray technologies”.
The institute has eight laboratories and employs five thousand people. Institute officials said the average pay of a scientific worker now adds up to 17.5 thousand roubles.
The famous institute is now the head organisation of the Special Economic Zone for Nuclear Physics and Nanotechnologies. Medvedev is also expected to visit the exhibition of innovation projects, displaying those that were drawn up at the CIS International Innovation Centre of Nanotechnologies. They include instruments and systems to detect different contraband cargoes, as well as the world’s most “sensitive” detectors of explosives and drugs, “nanoconductors” to introduce medicines into the human organism to cure cellular ailments, seismoacoustic technology methods of prospecting and extracting oil and gas.
