Putin Visits Hallowed Ground: Kurchatov Institute is Ground Zero For Russia’s Atomic Bomb Program
Research centers are to be opened nationwide, and the social status of researchers is to be improved, according to a statement made by Vladimir Putin today. Today, the President visited the Kurchatov Institute, which turned 75. The head of state met with the leaders of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Kurchatov Institute Academic Board.
Vladimir Putin stressed that the Russian authorities are focusing on building up our research potential and that we have already achieved notable success in this.
Vladimir Putin: "Large research centers will be established at leading universities: in Kaliningrad, the Volga region, in southern Russia, in Siberia, and the Far East. In fact, they are being created. They will make us far more competitive while attracting the best international scientists and young Russian researchers. Not just prominent leading universities and research centers should be used as the basis for the establishment of new technology centers. In fact, our space development program, about which I also spoke in the Presidential Address, is designed to provide conditions for people’s creative endeavors and to encourage them to form new research communities, so that conditions for self-realization, interesting jobs, and a full-bodied life will be available across Russia. Of course, we must also continue to improve the social status of our researchers, designers, and engineers, who are moving our science forward and making genuine breakthroughs".
Before the meeting, Vladimir Putin looked around the research center. The Kurchatov Institute was established in Moscow as laboratory No. 2 to create the Soviet nuclear bomb. The Institute was eventually on the cutting-edge of many fields in almost all modern sciences. Igor Kurchatov and his cohort didn't just build a nuclear weapon, they made breakthroughs in nuclear science. It was the Kurchatov Institute that designed the world's first industrial nuclear power plant.
The Kurchatov Institute was founded in 1943, although the nuclear laboratory headed by Igor Kurchatov was launched earlier — in 1942. Its main objective was to create a nuclear weapon. The first Soviet nuclear bomb, the RDS-1, was tested at the Semipalatinsk Test Site on August 29, 1949. The Institute designed the first nuclear reactor in Europe, the first industrial nuclear power plant in the world, reactors for the first Soviet submarine, and the world's first nuclear-powered vessel — the Lenin icebreaker. Many departments of the Kurchatov Institute have grown into independent research centers: The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna and the Troitsk Institute of Innovative and Thermonuclear Research. The Runet prototype was born in the Kurchatov Institute. It was the Relcom computer network created in 1990.
Nowadays the Kurchatov Institute is one of Russia's most prominent research centers. It researches nuclear power, controlled thermonuclear fusion, plasma processing, superconduction, etc. The Institute doesn't operate under the Russian Academy of Sciences; it is subordinate to the government.