Jubilee presentation

In harmony with yourself and your destiny

On 7 December, a new book by a chief researcher of FLNP JINR E.P.Shabalin "On the ship of your dream: notes of a reactor specialist" that has just been published in the Publishing Department of the Joint Institute was presented in the JINR Museum of History of Science and Technology. Evgeny Pavlovich did not celebrate his 85th birthday last year, waiting for the book to be published. These two events were united at the seminar.

"Evgeny Pavlovich Shabalin, a world-recognized classic of nuclear reactor physics, Laureate of the State Prizes of the USSR and the Russian Federation, certainly, did not drive caravels to unknown lands, his ship stories are a metaphorical reflection of the life collisions of a scientist-inventor in the mirror of boyish games. True, once Evgeny Pavlovich tried to use his professional experience as a reactor specialist on the world's first nuclear-powered icebreaker "Lenin", but this did not happen and by good fortune, otherwise we would not have been able to read his lively and fascinating story about the construction of a series of research pulsed reactors in Dubna - the major achievement of national science..."- is presented in the foreword to the book by RAS Corresponding Member V.L.Aksenov.

Evgeny Pavlovich's first book "In harmony with the reactor" was published in 2007, followed by novels and short stories not related to physics. Why is the ship of "your" dream in the title of the book and not "my"? "So that everyone can apply to his or her dream," as the author explained. "Why a ship? How have I sailed on it all these years?" he wondered and started his story from afar, since the hard post-war years and the red-haired boy Zhenya from Lyubertsy near Moscow. "We all come from childhood. I read a lot as a child. At the age of 11, I read three books from the adult library a week. When they were surprised at my choice, I said that the book was for my mother. Most of all, I was fond of travelling, adventures and fantasy. It has stayed in me for all my life. That's where my dream ship comes from."

He started his report with a story about his passion for photography and cinema. Cinema was everyone's only outlet in those years, more often trophy, and his cousin was also a film actress. Evgeny even found out what conditions were required for entering the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, but nevertheless, he entered MEPhI, without exams as a gold medalist. At the same time, he entered the amateur film studio at Mosfilm, being among the 22 lucky ones out of 900 selected. There were episodes played, there was an unfinished film, but the studio eventually fell into disrepair and closed down. In Dubna, where the young specialist Shabalin arrived, Aleksey Tyapkin and Georgy Stoletov organized the studio "DUBfilm" and shot a film about the International Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in 1957. Afterwards, they conceived a feature film that Evgeny shot as a cameraman. But film shooting was stopped because Mosfilm refused to make a sound track. On this, all the film activities of E.P.Shabalin ended and since then he has been involved in pulsed reactors and proves that they are the best reactors.

I used to be proud of you
And I always repeat the words:
The most pulsed
The fastest
Our reactor, our IBR-2!

(E.P.Shabalin)

Among the significant results obtained in the first years of his work at FLNP, Evgeny Pavlovich named the inaccuracy in the estimation of the reactor pulse energy discovered in the work of the pulsed reactor theoreticians I.I.Bondarenko and Yu.Ya.Stavissky. A more complete abstract of scientific (and not only) papers can be found in the new book. At the defense of his Ph.D. thesis, he argued with G.N.Flerov, regardless of his academic rank. But then L.K.Kulkin and the performances of DUST and KLOP appeared in the life of Evgeny Pavlovich. And there was also the famous KVN-63 Dubna - Obninsk that was played live, since there was no video recording equipment yet. The victory went to IPPE.

And only to the wise Shapiro
The distant horizon was visible
Where the megawatt mastodon
Rose above the world in his dreams.

And then Evgeny Pavlovich briefly presented his more than 60 years of work with pulsed reactors. Displaying numerous photographs of colleagues and friends, he talked more about them than about himself.

"In the 1970s, Volodya Ananiev and I worked a lot together; and this is Dmitry Ivanovich, supervises the work on the reactor; and this is 1991, Viktor Lazarevich became Director of the Laboratory, foreigners started to visit us. This is John Carpenter, my friend, whom I dedicated a chapter in the book to. One of the most interesting works was the complicated cold moderator project, Mayor of Dubna Sergey Kulikov that is present here, was a participant in this work."

After completing this project, in 2012, Evgeny Pavlovich started to write. "It's hard to write poems after 70, write prose!" he advised the audience. So, there were three novels under the general title "The Mystery of Science City" and a book for children "The Mystery of Nuulua Island" that he also recommends to adults. Afterwards, E.P.Shabalin started working on the idea of a new reactor "Neptune", V.L.Aksenov joined the work. But having been in Oxford, in the bar "The eagle and the child", in the favorite place of the writer Clive Lewis, he realized: he had put an end to it too early, he had to write more. About what? "The most important in the world are people, both great and simple and your loved ones," the speaker noted. And again we have a kaleidoscope of photographs: mother, wife, son, grandson, some of his best friends - A.V.Strelkov and T.D.Blokhintseva, a group photo of the IBR-2 staff (I would tell about each of them, he sighed). And the final slide of the presentation: "Life is a play in the theater. It doesn't matter how long it lasts, but how well it is played. I thank everyone who has helped and helps me to play this piece, helps me to live in harmony with the Laboratory. There are many of you, dear friends and helpers and that's good! Yours E.P."

The evening didn't end there. Mayor of Dubna Sergey Kulikov, awarding Evgeny Pavlovich a Letter of thanks, noted that he harmoniously joined physics and lyrics. "Evgeny Pavlovich not only made a great impression on me 20 years ago, but also shaped me as a person to some extent." Answering a question from the audience, what gives him more pleasure - physical research or theatrical activity, Evgeny Pavlovich said: "Theatrical activity is easier and you get an immediate feedback from the audience. Yet, in physics you rarely get applauses and I don't compete for recognition." That evening, applauses were heard more than once.

Olga TARANTINA,
photo by Elena PUZYNINA