West Shoots its Feet Again--CERN Bans Russians

Kurchatov Institute is watched over by its namesake.

SputnikGlobe’s headline blared out the astonishing news, “CERN’s ‘Politicized’ Plan to Ban Russian Scientists Threatens West With ‘Scientific Slum’ Status,” which as the article exposes is quite correct. With Sputnik and other English language media being blacked-out within the West, I’ll provide the bulk of the linked article below:

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French acronym CERN) plans to bar close to 500 Russian scientists from its labs, including the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator, effective December 1. Russian nuclear energy expert Alexei Anpilogov explains why the "politicized" move threatens to turn the West into a "scientific slum."

In 2008, to great fanfare and jubilation, CERN opened the 27 km-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, on the French-Swiss border.

Russian scientists, who had been working on their own massive particle accelerator project in the 1980s prior to the Soviet Union's dissolution, played an active and critical role in the LHC's creation. CERN signed a cooperation agreement with Russia's Institute of High Energy Physics in 1993, and up to 700 Russian specialists, plus many more from other post-Soviet republics, took part in the $4.75 billion European scientific megaproject's construction.

A decade-and-a-half after the LHC's launch, CERN intends to formally end cooperation with Russia, to ban Russian scientists from the organization's sites and demand that they hand in their Swiss and French residency permits, unless they start working for scientific institutions outside Russia.

CERN's "absolutely irresponsible" and "politicized" decision is nothing short of an attempt to "erase" Russia from international science, and a move that will inevitably backfire, nuclear energy expert and political scientist Alexei Anpilogov told Sputnik.

The decision will result in a situation where “all countries will be extremely cautious about science megaprojects, and engaging in international scientific cooperation in general,” knowing that they could be booted at any time for “absolutely political reasons,” the observer pointed out.

A large portion of the infrastructure involved in the LHC’s construction was made possible thanks to ideas contributed by scientists from Russia, who have long played a leading role in elementary particle physics, quantum physics and astrophysics, Anpilogov said.

Today, these fields are giving birth “to fundamental technologies of big science that will be demand, 20, 50, 100 years from now.” If Russia’s ability to contribute to world science is diminished, “this will stop progress, or at least slow it down quite significantly,” he said.

At the same time, Western countries’ "extraordinary" attempt to wall themselves off from Russian science, a process exemplified by CERN's decision, is being taken to levels unseen even during the Cold War, and threaten to boomerang against them in a dramatic way.

In this divided world, Russia will be able to “jointly implement ambitious and large-scale megaprojects," with countries in the Global South, "without Western scientists’ participation. And in such a scenario, the 'wall' now being built around Russia may turn out to be a wall around the European Union and the West in general, where scientists could find themselves in a scientific slum from which it may prove quite difficult to escape,” Anpilogov pointed out.

Anpilogov expects Russia and the countries of developing world, who make up the global majority and are playing an increasingly important role in world science, to forge new megaprojects based on the principle of the non-ideologization and non-politicization of science. [My Emphasis]

Mikhail Kovalchuk, head of the Kurchatov Institute whose talk with President Putin will follow this, contributed his thoughts in the article:

Mikhail Kovalchuk, head of the Kurchatov Institute, Russia’s leading nuclear energy R&D institution, told Russian media on Saturday that as “difficult” it will be to lose the scientific connections built up with Western countries over the decades, “for Russian science, this is a positive development, since the megaprojects being developed in Russia today will require many scientists and engineers.”…

“In other words, over the next five to seven years, we will have the most advanced, most modern, most powerful research infrastructure in the world,” Kovalchuk said.

As for CERN’s LHC, and other European scientific megaprojects, including Germany’s European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility and France’s ITER nuclear fusion research and engineering project, all of these complex installations “are based on the ideas of Soviet-Russian science,” the official stressed, with Russia being both an intellectual and financial donor to their creation. [My Emphasis]

Several months ago during a chat between Putin and Russian scientists I reported about, the possibility of connections to Western scientists being broken was discussed with the consensus being that the West would be extremely foolish to cut such ties, particularly given Europe’s drastic economic decline which will kill or drastically decrease funding for EU megaprojects. It appears the Russophobes have won and decided that killing their own projects via expulsion of the top experts needed to be done. I’ll remind readers that even during the darkest days of USSR/Russia’s decline from 1985-2000, Russian science and military science continued unabated, which is one of the reasons why Yeltsin was able to be ousted, and Russia’s military was able to quickly rebound as many of its experts never left, which enabled Putin to announce in 2004 that Russia had successfully tested a hypersonic missile—an announcement nobody bothered listening to. I expect most of those 700 specialists will return to Russia and be amazed at the amount of effort that’s being put into the building of new research institutes and promotion of hard-core science.

President of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" Mikhail Kovalchuk.

The CERN news broke prior to the meeting between Putin and Kovalchuk but wasn’t its cause. An update on progress of the many new branches being constructed was the primary, already scheduled reason. Yes, congratulations on his birthday were provided. The central institution, Kurchatov Institute, website is only in Russian, but is worth visiting for those curious. The two men have known each other for decades, so let’s now read what they said:

Vladimir Putin: Mikhail Valentinovich, Kurchatov is no longer an institute, it is a whole agglomeration of various institutions, and it is developing in various ways and is engaged in almost all areas of research. What do you think is still a priority?

Mikhail Kovalchuk: You know, Mr President, the priority is what you have set out in your decrees. Today, the Kurchatov Institute consists of six presidential decrees that we are working on.

The first is the development of nature-like technologies. The second is a genetic behavioral program for the development of nature-like technologies and a program for creating unique mega-installations throughout the country. We will have the best research infrastructure in the world in the next five to eight years.

Then there is the agriculture program, in which we are responsible for the scientific and genetic parts. Plus, we are the main scientific organization, again by your decree, under the program for the development of the nuclear complex.

Plus, microelectronics, this is a separate conversation, I will say a few words about this, we are engaged in a fundamentally new neuromorphic microelectronics.

Today, we have almost all, almost 100 percent of the network infrastructure for science, the entire supercomputer part, all the networks – 20 thousand kilometers of networks. Now we are working on a quantum network, also here on the territory.

That is, we have very diversified things, as you instructed, because we have about 30 institutes under the roof of the Kurchatov Institute initially. We have a powerful interdisciplinary center.

Plus fundamental physics, especially now that CERN has ended ,all Western projects, and a huge number of people are coming back here, most of them from the Kurchatov Institute. Therefore, the restart of basic research today is also a very important thing. And in this sense, we actually have a technological breakthrough in fact.

Plus, our traditional stuff about nuclear power. We have created new nuclear power plants, for example, a nuclear battery for the development of the Arctic. Now it is actively moving.

Plus, we are doing it on Sevmash, now the ship is laid down-remember, you went down, looked at the [frigate] Oleg that sank in the Baltic. We have now developed a two-person underwater manned vehicle that descends to two kilometers (2000 meters), commissioned by Gazprom. This is to control the Turkish Blue Stream gas pipeline.

Vladimir Putin: I went down two kilometers on Lake Baikal. Kilometer 900.

Mikhail Kovalchuk: There are 2200 here. This is a manned vehicle. And now we are also creating a remote-controlled device with Gazprom, which is thrown out from there and goes to the cable for verification.

Vladimir Putin: At this depth, I don't think you can see anything in the Black Sea. Hydrogen sulfide medium.

Mikhail Kovalchuk: But nevertheless. We made a unique simulator (completely complete simulation), you sit in this cabin, lower it, complete imitation. The simulator is a completely unique thing.

In addition, we were fully engaged in restoring order in the Arctic, as I reported to you, on rehabilitation. And now we have made a completely new nuclear power system – this battery. We have the Elena station, a battery built at the factory, which provides up to a megawatt of electricity and up to 15 megawatts of heat. But in the Arctic, where there are no large consumers, where it is impossible to create either a network structure or a large station, these local stations solve the problem.

We have now signed an agreement with Yakutia. Recently, we met with Nikolaev on development. This is, you know, all the forgotten old stuff. In Soviet times, this station in its first incarnation was tethered, in Yakutia it is already installed. Then the Soviet government collapsed, and it was all over. But after that, we moved to a qualitatively new level in terms of security, everything else, and now we are moving. This is very interesting for Gazprom for the development of remote fields. And this program is deployed.

In addition, in our country, all nuclear power in space is a direct transformation. You have appointed me as the head of the priority area for direct transformation.

What is a "direct conversion"? We are now turning the reactor's heat into steam, and the steam turns the turbines. It's not direct. And direct – there are thermoelectric elements, a special substance. You surround the station with this, you have one part hot and the other part cold, all the heat goes into electricity without movement, without anything.

So, all the energy in space is just like that. We've been doing this for years. And now all further space exploration is connected with two things. The first is fundamentally new engines. If we think about it, we once talked about this topic, we are flying into space today, like Munchausen on the core. Our RD-180 engine worked for three hundred seconds, gave a kick, and we flew along ballistic trajectories that we cannot influence. And we need to barrage, land on the Moon. So, today we have prototypes of engines that provide completely different thrust, completely different opportunities for deep space flight. This is the first one.

For example, there is a lunar station based on the Selenium battery principle, a prototype of it. We now do one thing, and then we try to spread it as much as possible.

The same goes for materials. For example, thanks to your decisions, our institute today has, I think, the world's largest materials science potential, because everything that flies, absolutely everything, was created by the Institute of Aviation Materials, which is part of the Kurchatov Institute.

And now we are creating a single materials science center from the Prometheus and VIAM institutes, because the material base is the same, and today Rosatom has the same requests.

You know, people often ask: what are your priorities? We have only two priorities, or rather, three, but two main ones. The first is that any human thought that has arisen in your head is materialized in the form of materials. You've come up with a picture, for example – you need paints, canvas, easel, and so on. You came up with a melody – you need a grand piano, a musical instrument, sheet music, ink. That is, any thing is a material, and to create a material, you need energy. In other words, energy and materials science are two eternal civilizational priorities.

Vladimir Putin: And the soul?

Mikhail Kovalchuk: And the third priority is the soul and intellect, absolutely. That's all. These three that we have, I think, are some of the best in the world, because if we didn't know how to do this, we wouldn't have gone into space and made nuclear power. It's all part of this case. So I think we have a good situation today.

But globally, I wanted to discuss with you the details of a possible breakthrough in a number of areas that we have prepared.

I'll just remind you. In 2008, we launched a pilot project to create by your decree the first national laboratories of the Kurchatov Institute, which we began to annex. So, after a decade and a half, I'm ready to tell you what we did and how we focused before the jump.

Vladimir Putin: Good. [My Emphasis]

If you feel like you were deprived of learning more, I sympathize 100%. What are those “possible breakthroughs”? Here’s a snippet from the nuclear energy page of the Kurchatov Institute’s website:

The Kurchatov Institute has joined forces of a number of organizations to develop new types of steel for nuclear reactor vessels. Materials have been obtained that increase the power of reactors and their service life up to 100 years.

Yes, materials science. I recall the fictional transparent aluminum from Star Trek, or is it really fictional? With the West trailing so far behind in so many areas of science, how foolish was it of whoever the source was that ordered CERN to send its indispensable Russian specialists home? I’ll bet whoever it was has little if any knowledge of science. And of course, Russia works very tightly with China and Iran and more so with India now, but there’s clearly room for more specialists from other nations, which is one of the reasons behind the expansion of the Kurchaatov Institute. The Chinese and others who envision a future of dynamic and fruitful cooperation instead of the longstanding detrimental competition aiming for Zero-sum outcomes are clearly onto the proper system for the development of human relations.

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