The council's experts discussed the reactor's capabilities for producing new isotopes, technologies for nuclear medicine and materials science, as well as the problem of training personnel for fast neutron reactors. Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Stepan Kalmykov, and Director General of the International Center for Research based on MBIR, Vasily Konstantinov, took part in the work of the committee today.
MBIR is a fourth-generation multi-purpose fast neutron research reactor. The State Corporation Rosatom is constructing it in Dimitrovgrad (Ulyanovsk Region) on the premises of the State Scientific Center—the Research Institute of Nuclear Reactors (the State Corporation Rosatom). The reactor is being built as part of the federal project of the Comprehensive Program "Development of Engineering, Technologies, and Scientific Research in the Field of the Use of Atomic Energy in the Russian Federation for the period up to 2024," which is the most important project for the long-term development of the experimental potential of the domestic nuclear industry. This project will ensure Russia's leadership in the development of innovative reactor technologies for the next half century. Its main purpose is to conduct mass reactor tests of innovative materials and prototypes of core elements for fourth-generation nuclear power systems, including fast neutron reactors with fuel cycle closure, as well as thermal reactors of small and medium power."Non-power applications of nuclear technologies, such as nuclear medicine and materials, are of interest to a large number of countries and organizations. Therefore, as a business area, it has great prospects in the entire MBIR project,"
"The committee is very active. It is not by chance that we are at TPU today. This is the flagship university of Rosatom and the only university with an operating reactor where projects on the non-power application of nuclear technologies have already been implemented. This is the production of radiopharmaceuticals, the nuclear doping of silicon, and materials science. That's all that can be translated and scaled," he says.
Three representatives of TPU are on the Advisory Council for the creation of MBIR. The university rector, Dmitry Sednev, heads the work of the committee on non-energy use.
"Today, the main areas of work were outlined. The basic committee membership was approved, and the work plan proposals were formed for the next year. The committee and the reactor itself are international projects. Therefore, a proposal was made to hold the next in-person meeting in Uzbekistan, on the basis of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan. In addition, colleagues from Algeria nominated their representative to the committee right during the meeting, which underlines the high interest in the non-energy use of both the MBIR itself and similar reactors," Dmitry Sednev says.
Among the key areas of the committee's work, the rector noted the issue of creating educational programs for specialists capable of working with fast neutron reactors.
The committee will next meet in early 2023. The session will be dedicated to the global capabilities of the MBIR reactor. Then a detailed road map will be formed with a research program in non-energy areas for the MBIR reactor."For our university, the energy agenda and nuclear medicine are strategic priorities in our work. However, as an institution of higher education, we are responsible for education. I am confident that the formation of educational programs should also be one of the most important areas of work for our committee. If we do not start training specialists for MBIR now, we will face a shortage of personnel when it is built. We need to think not only about programs for new specialists, but also about retraining existing ones, including those for international partner countries,"