Русский
Alexey Likhachev, Head of the Rosatom State Corporation, said that Russia is ready to provide friendly foreign partners with access to the unique research infrastructure of the nuclear industry. This primarily refers to the facilities of the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors (RIAR) in Dimitrovgrad, which celebrated its 70th anniversary last week.
Alexey Likhachev emphasised that the RIAR is a unique research base that has no international equal. Most of Russia’s research reactors operate at the site. Six facilities of various types allow testing of fuel and materials not only for all existing power units but also for evolutionary and innovative nuclear projects. The construction of the Multi-Purpose Fast Reactor (MBIR) is currently underway at the RIAR and should be completed by 2028.
The MBIR is expected to be the largest nuclear research reactor in the world upon completion. This reactor will provide modern research infrastructure for the ‘friendly countries’ in the global nuclear industry and will facilitate international collaboration in nuclear research, allowing scientists from various countries to conduct experiments without direct ownership of the reactor facility.
The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, and the Chinese company Shanghai ZDAN International have already joined the international consortium. In February, an agreement on strategic partnership was signed with the Arab Atomic Energy Agency.
The reference to ‘friendly countries’ will be a sobering issue for the European Union. At present, just 16 of the 27 EU nations possess nuclear power reactors, with only France generating a significant amount of power from its nuclear energy programme.
| Country | Number of NPP | Capacity (Mwe) |
| Belgium | 2 | 2.076 |
| Bulgaria | 2 | 2.006 |
| Czech Republic | 6 | 3.934 |
| Finland | 5 | 4.394 |
| France | 57 | 63.000 |
| Hungary | 4 | 1.916 |
| Netherlands | 1 | 482 |
| Romania | 2 | 1.300 |
| Russia | 36 | 26.802 |
| Slovakia | 5 | 2.308 |
| Slovenia | 1 | 688 |
| Spain | 7 | 7.121 |
| Sweden | 6 | 6.882 |
| Switzerland | 4 | 2.960 |
| United Kingdom | 9 | 5.883 |
Generally speaking, 1 MWe powers about 1,000 homes in Europe per year. As can be seen, Europe is woefully underpowered, a situation exacerbated by their disconnecting themselves from inexpensive Russian energy supplies while not arranging suitable alternatives – as can be seen from their subsequent over-reliance on Middle Eastern supplies these past few weeks.
Russia’s decision to essentially bar ‘unfriendly countries” scientists from participating in research at the MBIR facility is essentially a response to the EU and UK decision to ban Russian and Belarussian scientists from participating in the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) research projects, including the ‘Large Hadron Collider’ project based in Switzerland. Over 500 scientists were affected. Russia had been both financially and technically contributing to CERN for decades. European politicians appear to have forgotten the term ‘inefficacious’ and the main scientific principle that cause will always produce an effect.
Rosatom, meanwhile, is the world’s leading exporter of nuclear energy technology, which can now be built without such reactors creating nuclear material suitable for developing weapons. Rosatom is currently engaged in 41 overseas NPP projects, with an equal number under discussion. Meanwhile, the company is under sanctions in Europe and cannot engage with EU partners. Building NPP from scratch is typically a 15-year process in the European Union due to multiple regulatory hurdles and a lack of reasonable pan-EU energy policy. On this occasion, the inefficacious effect may be to prolong European energy shortages until 2040 – while other countries and their industries overtake them.
