| Russia’s president Vladimir Puit has formally approved the startup of the Pik high-flux research reactor at the BP Konstantinov St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI), part of the country’s Kurchatov Institute national research centre.
“I am asking you to put the reactor into energy operation,” Mr Putin told a virtual launch ceremony, according to state news agency Tass. The Pik reactor is Russia’s newest research reactor, but its startup has been repeatedly delayed. Construction began in 1976 and over the next decade the main buildings were erected and a significant part of the installation work completed. However, work stopped after the Chernobyl accident in 1986. It resumed in 2001 and in 2011 a physical launch was carried out at zero power. In 2019 repair work was completed and the first stage of power startup at 100kW began. In 2020 work was carried out on the retrofitting and replacement of some components. Reports said RUB2.2 billion ($29m) had been set aside for this work in 2020. The Pik reactor is intended for research in fields including nuclear physics, structural and radiation biology, radiation physics and chemistry, and for solving applied technical problems. It is intended to become the basis of a world-class centre for neutron research. The Pik reactor will join three other high-flux facilities worldwide, at Petten in the Netherlands, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US and the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz FRM II in Germany. |
