On the CP JINR session

Participants of the CP JINR session speak

  Mikhail Chudakov, Deputy Director General of the IAEA:

- As I have already said in my welcoming speech, we develop a long-term cooperation with JINR, we have extended it again and currently work in a number of nuclear physics areas, especially those related to research reactors. Therefore, I am very happy to attend this session, this is my first visit. To be more exact, for the first time I visited here as a student of MEPhI forty years ago... Surely, over the years, everything has changed here... Therefore, I am grateful for the invitation. The IAEA will work jointly with JINR in future as one of the major international centres for development of nuclear science. And of course, we will expand our cooperation.

  Arsen Khvedelidze, Plenipotentiary Representative of Georgia, Chairman of the CP session:

- Today, it was a great pleasure to be in the hall when, after so many restrictions related to the pandemic and the unstable situation in the world, we all gathered together in Dubna. It was a full representation, a quorum met. The Institute develops, this is the most important thing that was noted at the session. The tactics and development strategy of the Institute are aimed at adapting to the difficult conditions in which we have to work. This is not a passive, wait-and-see approach, but an actual approach, making new, non-trivial decisions. And today, we are all on this path. I think that the Seven-Year Programme for the Development of JINR that we are discussing today, will determine our development for many years to come and will have a strong impact on our future and the future of both the Institute and science in our Member States.

  Grigory Trubnikov, JINR Director:

- The main force that has made possible what I have announced in my report is the support of the Institute staff. This is our main driving force and our main potential. Of course, it would have been impossible without the support of Member States and without sufficient funding, without many formal problems that had to be urgently resolved, without popularizing the activities of the Institute, without the work of our teams at various conferences, exhibitions and so on, it would have been difficult. But this would be impossible without such a strong team, such strong staff of the Laboratories and of the Institute that organize all this, for today, the number of tasks is just off the charts. And I wish to express many thanks to all the employees, technicians, specialists, mechanics and of course, to my team - Heads of Laboratories, Heads of the Institute. This is our shared success.

I think that we thereby demonstrate good openness and efficiency to our new partners and this is how we make them get interested in working with such a team and that is exactly why Mexico, Serbia and China are among them... I have recently listened to an interview with Andrey Ivanovich Denisov that was Soviet Ambassador to China for a long time, about the meeting of the leaders of our two countries: 14 agreements were signed, two of them relate directly to science and technology, one of them is ours. And he said: China is such a country that if it signs something with its partner, then in this document every word is weighed on pharmaceutical scales. For me, this is a good characteristic of our work, as well. Especially in the last three months, we have worked very extensively, have held a large number of joint meetings with our Chinese partners, we have actually coordinated our priorities, our plans and this is in such a short period.

...A few words about the progress of the NICA project. I would say it is an interesting time, not a boring time. We have many problems, many challenges, but also many new opportunities. And in each such case, we look for ways out and we find them. I think that such a difficult sanctioning atmosphere around the country where the Institute is located has allowed us to take a slightly broader look at the membership of our traditional partners.

Material by Evgeny MOLCHANOV,
Photo by Elena PUZYNINA