SEMINARS

Through the pages of IBR-2 history

On 15 March, a seminar dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the commissioning of the IBR-2 reactor was held at the JINR Scientists' Centre. This is the third seminar in the anniversary series.

Opening it, FLNP Director Egor Lychagin compared the fate of the reactor with human life - commissioning is like the first breath of a child, the physical start-up lays the future character, the power start-up, carried out at IBR-2 from 1977 to 1984, is childhood with its illnesses and growing youth. Finally, it started operating in 1984.

"It's not a round anniversary, of course, but for such a serious facility, every ten years is a milestone and this machine has a great future," JINR Director Grigory Trubnikov noted, emphasizing that even today, several people from that team work in the laboratory that commissioned the reactor. "In the mid-2000s, IBR 2 underwent a major modernization. It was then that I had the opportunity to meet the Neutronka team and the DRS and DRFS specialists," he recalled. "I was lucky enough to communicate with V.D. Ananyev. For me, it was a school of communicating with people with such a high degree of responsibility that this trait became one of the principles that I still profess. It would not be an exaggeration to say that at the turn of 2010, the reactor and laboratory made a fantastic transition, thanks to which FLNP became associated in the world with a large multi-user facility. I think the best gift for you should be the launch of the reactor in the fourth quarter."

In his response, Egor Lychagin noted that the laboratory felt the support of Directorate in difficult years and hopes that it will feel it in future as well. This was followed by the response of JINR Director: "Don't doubt it!"

The report "Unique and unforgettable IBR" was made by Evgeny Shabalin that was one of the galaxy of those that stood at the origins of the reactor. "I want to illuminate with love and sadness the path that resulted in the development of IBR-2," he began his story. And he started from 1960 - the date of launch of the first IBR, but there were also earlier important events: in 1955, D.I.Blokhintsev came up with the idea of a pulsed reactor. Although Evgeny Shabalin does not believe that Klaus Fuchs passed on to us the data obtained by Otto Frisch in 1945, just as he is not sure that D.I.Blokhintsev knew about this American experience. The speaker recalled the theorist Yu.D.Stavissky (IPPE, Obninsk) - "he taught us young people how to work with a reactor," his talented colleague I.I.Bondarenko, V.F.Kolesov, according to Evgeny Shabalin, the best theorist of pulsed reactors in Russia. The report included many photographs: the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the first reactor, heated debates among those gathered on the ship about the 20th anniversary of IBR-2, a photograph from 1966 with six employees of the first (literally!) Department of IBR 2. How did he describe the most interesting period? It dates from 1969-1977, when all the buildings and the reactor itself were constructed, the foundation pit for which was dug and concreted even before the project was approved. Yu.A.Tumanov captured the moment of lifting the 81-meter reactor ventilation pipe in 1975. A photograph conveying the emotional climax of the moment of the first acceleration of the reactor with stormy applause from all those gathered at the control panel...

The chief designer of the project N.A.Khryastov (NIKIET, Moscow), literally lived in Dubna while the project was underway - for FLNP employees this was very convenient in terms of constant working communication. Evgeny Shabalin spoke about the unforeseen effects that arose during the launch. Some of them were bad, some were good and some were neutral. It was only in 2004 that the bad effect in the moving reflector was eliminated. Among the memorable dates, the speaker noted the output of 2 MW at 5 Hz on 9 April, 1984, a representative international meeting on pulsed reactors held in Dubna in 1994, an explanation of the effect of self-oscillations in 2023. He concluded his speech with a photograph of the unforgettable and irreplaceable Vladimir Ananyev that was only 31 years old when he was appointed chief engineer of the reactor.

The seminar participants learnt about all living directors of the laboratory in an interview film made by UC JINR. The anniversaries were congratulated by N.V.Romanova (NIKIET) that noted that the reactor remains unique today and the most important component of the success of the development of any facility is people. "I consider V.D.Ananyev to be my teacher and I'm not the only one that thinks so," N.V.Romanova noted. "As a result of the creative imagination and flight of thought of JINR employees, a very unusual, but very beautiful design was born in iron. Generations change, but the creative spirit of JINR remains and there is hope that it will be embodied in the new facility." D.V.Khmelnitsky (VNIITF, Snezhinsk) congratulated his colleagues that expressed hope for expanding cooperation with the laboratory from the NEPTUNE project to other areas.

Denis Kozlenko's report "Research of condensed matter at the IBR-2 reactor: from the past to the future" was filled with famous names, photographs and results. He emphasized that a unique experimental base had been created for interdisciplinary investigations of condensed matter; a number of results obtained were of a breakthrough nature and influenced the development of neutron scattering techniques in the world and the development of new areas based on them. He also spoke about recently developed facilities, modernized old ones and two ones under development - the SANSARA and BJN spectrometers and also outlined the main research areas in condensed matter physics.

Inga Zinkovskaya named her senior colleagues M.V.Frontasyeva and S.S.Pavlova as co-authors of her report "NAA at the IBR-2 reactor: yesterday, today and tomorrow." And she started with history: the Neutron Activation Analysis appeared in the laboratory in 1963-1965, its ideological inspirer was V.M.Nazarov. In 1984, the REGATA facility started operating and the first scientific publication appeared the following year. From the first days of its organization, the sector was multinational. After the death of Vladimir Maksimovich in 1994, it was headed by M.V.Frontasieva. The range of investigations in the sector expanded, electronics were modernized and a device for automatically changing samples appeared.

In 2020, a new facility control panel was developed and four new automatic sample changers appeared. The sector remains multinational and its international cooperation includes 140 scientific organizations from 37 countries, with new countries including Mexico and the Dominican Republic. "The era of the NAA has not passed, as European researchers claim," Inga concluded. "The technique will be in demand in geology, archeology, analysis of objects of extraterrestrial origin, materials science, nanotoxicology and medicine." Proud of her student, M.V. Frontasieva noted that Inga came to the sector as a student and in 2022, she defended her doctoral thesis. And many people take this path to JINR.

Grigory Trubnikov and Egor Lychagin awarded FLNP employees with JINR Certificates of Honor:

N.P.Antsupov, A.A.Belyakov, L.V.Edunov, V.G.Ermilov, V.P.Erusalimtsev, V.A.Komlev, I.V.Matrosov, Yu.V.Mironov, Yu.N.Pepelyshev, A.D.Rogov, S.V.Rudenko, V.A.Trepalin, I.D.Filin, V.N.Finagin, S.A.Tsarenkov.

Olga TARANTINA,
photo by Elena PUZYNINA