Obninsk NEW 2023

The history of the nuclear industry and technologies originates from achievements of fundamental science and education. Each generation of scientists and educators played their role in making a one-step forward towards a sustainable tomorrow where atoms serve for the benefit of people in power generation, protection, healthcare, production, food and many other fields. Today’s nuclear education has absorbed all of these applications and defines future pathways for hundreds of professions, and therefore, becomes a fundament for discoveries in science. This session addresses the insights of human-centric companies, research & education centers on building a sustainable tomorrow where nuclear industry is attracting the best talents to tackle global challenges for the sake of future generations.

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Obninsk is the place where people eventually harnessed the power of nuclear energy for the sake of humanity. 1954 has not only redefined the capacities of electricity generation but created the whole new market of nuclear power plants which as of today counts 436 reactors in operation in 32 countries around the world. Nuclear energy has found many shapes from conventional to floating NPPs and small modular reactors which increase access to carbon-free and affordable electricity for even more countries. It means that more nations are considering nuclear power programmes recalling the experience of the old members of the nuclear energy club and shaping their own pathway towards nuclear power generation, especially in the Global South. This session addresses the country perspectives and focuses on the development of nuclear energy in different regions of the globe.

All the effects and phenomena observed in modern tokamaks take on new dimensions at ITER, the world’s most complex and expensive tokamak. The dust that arises when thermonuclear plasma interacts with the first wall of the tokamak can pose a danger if it accumulates uncontrollably. To enable periodic monitoring of the amount of dust, our team is developing a specialized probe for taking small samples of dust from the tokamak for analysis. But how do you collect dust in a vacuum? And how do you make sure you’re getting a representative sample? These are some of the matters we had to address in developing this system.

Many people have heard about the Large Hadron Collider, but how does it actually work and what can it do? Are there any similar facilities in Russia? Does humanity need a Very Large Hadron Collider, and why are scientists building a Not So Large Hadron Collider right now? Yaroslav Shashkov will answer these questions and explain how particle accelerators help us battle cancer, discover new materials and drugs, and why there is an accelerator under the Louvre.

Waves with intrinsic orbital angular momentum (OAM) are widely utilized in both optics and electron microscopy due to their helical phase that produces a spiraling current and a well-defined OAM along the beam axis. Despite the tremendous progress made in the past 25 years, there are still many open questions, particularly when it comes to the charged twisted particles. The talk will present a method for constructing solutions of the two-dimensional Schrödinger equation for a twisted charged particle in an alternating magnetic field. The core of the method is the well-known rectification theorem for a sufficiently smooth vector field described in Arnold's book. The solution of the desired problem is easily found based on the solutions of the stationary problem (Landau solutions) by changing the scale and introducing an additional phase factor. The talk will also discuss some crucial features of the evolution of the twisted electron in solenoidal fields.

Nuclear industry has made a revolution in high-tech healthcare counting from applied radiotherapy to nuclear diagnostic imaging, particularly addressing cancer treatment. According to the UK Cancer Center, cancer incidence rates were projected to increase worldwide by 55% by 2040, which creates an additional demand on radiologists and nuclear healthcare professionals who understand how to use isotopes to benefit people’s lives. Noteworthy, approximately 3 to 4 billion individuals worldwide lack access to basic radiology services, and only 25% of people in low- to middle-income countries (LMICs) have access to cancer diagnostic services. Today’s nuclear medical science goes even beyond that by engaging other fields like nutrition where non-radioactive isotope techniques are used in infant and young child feeding, childhood obesity, maternal and adolescent nutrition etc. The everlasting demand for healthcare specialists who deal with nuclear solutions create an immense need to increase access to comprehensive and upskilling educational programmes that have to stay up-to-date and available. The session discusses the present model of education for healthcare professionals and advises what has to be done to catch up with the developments in nuclear science for better lives of patients.

The presentation provides a brief overview of the production of stable and radioactive isotopes by the State Corporation "Rosatom". Stable isotopes are in high demand in current and planned experiments to search for hypothetical neutrinoless double beta decay process, rarest nuclear decay process in Universe. Such experiments require hundreds of kilograms and even tons of such isotopes as Mo-100, Ge-76, Se-82, Xe-136, etc., and only the enrichment capacity of RosAtom corporation enterprises can satisfy this demand. Another application of enriched stable isotopes is their use as starting targets for the production of high-intensity neutrino sources (Cr-51 andAr-37). These sources are used to calibrate solar neutrino detectors, as well as to study the properties of neutrinos (for example, the existence of a hypothetical sterile neutrino or a neutrino magnetic moment).

The future of the nuclear sector is going to be many things, but first of all – inclusive, and when it comes to building that, we will definitely need to take a comprehensive approach. In this session we would like to address the question on how to create a deeply involving environment, where everyone can feel welcome, no matter gender, physical abilities or nationality. In order to find out what hinders the inclusive culture and whether there are successful practices to take down those walls, we look through the lens of female professionals. To create a truly inclusive environment we will have to learn not only to communicate, but to build deeper interpersonal relationships, create shared vision and that is where women might have something to say. During this session female professionals from around the world will share their stories about building a successful career in a largely male-dominated sphere, and envisage the inclusive culture we all together will have to build.

Cosmic rays are a powerful tool for studying nuclear physics. Today particle detectors are used to tackle both the fundamental questions about the nature of the quark-gluon matter and the applied problems, such as weather forecasting or the search for uranium ore deposits. MEPhI University has extensive experience building detectors of cosmic ray muons, including those used in the nuclear power industry.

For decades nuclear physics has supplied knowledge about and refined our understanding of the nuclear matter’s structure. Much of the information we have about nuclear spins, nuclear magnetic moments and root-mean-square charge radii comes from atomic spectroscopy. Besides the properties of the ground and isomeric states of nuclei, atomic spectroscopy proved useful for accessing the internal nuclear dynamics – for example, the single nuclear resonances, which can be accessed via certain electron transitions.

One of the intriguing ideas has to do with the nuclear isomeric state of the thorium-229m isotope. At several electronvolts, it has by far the lowest excited energy level of all nuclei known. This could make it possible to create an atomic clock of unprecedented precision. Other potential applications are isotope separation, as well as the storage and controlled release of energy. Such storage is underlied by so-called isomer depletion. If the nuclear isomer is excited into a higher state, called the trigger state, and the relation between the decay branches is favorable, a controlled release of the accumulated nuclear energy on demand is possible.

The suitable excitation mechanisms are nuclear excitation by electron transition (NEET), by electron capture (NEEC) and by two-photon electron transition (NETP), with the latter proposed recently by us. In this talk, we consider the various mechanisms of nuclear excitation by electronic processes, along with their experimental verification.

The operation of a nuclear reactor leads to changes in the fuel’s isotope composition, which is important to monitor both for operational safety reasons and in order to proceed to the next stage in the nuclear fuel cycle. The conventional approaches used to determine the isotope composition at various stages in the fuel lifetime rely either on fast computational methods, prone to relatively large errors, or on numerical simulations, which are more accurate but also more time-consuming. This talk presents the results of an effort to develop a method for predicting the isotope composition using data mining methods, which combines the best of both worlds.

Everyone who would like accelerate their personal growth in the areas of: public speaking, active listening, critical thinking, organizing ideas and structuring the arguments conflict resolution, time management

The art of debate involves mastering skills of high intrinsic value: the confidence to speak in public; the construction of a logical argument; the ability to read an audience's reactions; and, perhaps most importantly, the willingness to hear others' arguments, and to respond to them

The role of young people in global decision-making is reaching new heights as the youth communities and groups are taking seats at the tables and making sure that their suggestions are taken into account. The same applies to the members of YGNs and other pro-nuclear young activists who are visible at the high-level conferences and actively rebalancing the opinions of decision-makers. The communities of young nuclear professionals and scientists across the globe are well-connected and coordinated to leverage joint action and ensure that the future of energy is nuclear friendly. This session addresses the best cases of pro-nuclear youth-led action as well as the role of businesses in facilitating the change. The session will also highlight the opportunities associated with the World Youth Festival which is taking place in Sochi next year.

As in some countries nuclear energy is facing strong opposition and in the other it is rapidly transforming, building a plan for a successful career in the nuclear industry is becoming a challenge. The post-Covid labor market defines the new conditions and standards for employees, and the nuclear industry is not an exception. Nevertheless, nuclear industries, with its various business focuses, strong training capacities and the global scale, can create a variety of professional pathways for self-development and growth. International nuclear agencies, research institutes, soft-skills academies and even a global PR service are examples of how diverse nuclear organizations are. This session explains how to save momentum and motivation in the volatility, and addresses key practices on how to bring oneself through in the nuclear industry.

Guided TechAcademy tours and workshops (by registration)

The key technological challenge for modern society is the increasing need for computing power and data processing speed. Supercomputers are being replaced by quantum ones. Quantum computers can solve algorithms in seconds that take classical computers tens or even thousands of years to solve. Every day society is moving closer to a new computing paradigm. The largest technology companies (Google, IBM, Intel, Honeywel, etc.) are investing in a stack of technologies related to quantum computing. In July 2023, a 16-qubit ion quantum computer was presented to the President of the Russian Federation. At the moment this is the most powerful machine of its kind in Russia. The project was developed by a team of scientists from the Russian Quantum Center and the Physical Institute named after. Lebedev under the coordination of Rosatom.

What's the next step in development? What can a computer calculate in the next 5 years? How will the life of an ordinary person change with the introduction of quantum computers into corporations?

We live in a world with a high pace of change where a whole technology cycle can change within 2 to 3 years. New technologies and new business models create a demand for more and more new talent, regular reskilling and upskilling programs. At the same time traditional education systems cannot supply up-to-date training to all those who need it. We also live in a world with increasing complexity of processes which results in new jobs and new requirements to the skills portfolio. Despite a completely different economic and social context we continue to develop talents the same way as we did in the twentieth century. Standard education, one education and one job for life – this concept cannot work today. This discussion will bring together experts from academia, industry, and edtech to identify and discuss how a combination of new and traditional training formats could increase access to engineering education throughout professional life in the nuclear industry.

The nuclear industry has been there for decades. However, it is still often perceived by the public through the lens of tragic events - Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The heroes of the industry remain unknown to a wide audience. The recent global movie premiere “Oppenheimer” also tells a story about creating weapons of unprecedented destructive power and causing monstrous consequences after their use. Besides, the theme of Fukushima has not left the screens for 12 years. Is it any wonder that the nuclear sector practically lacks support from the general public, and the number of young people considering the industry as a sphere of their self-realization is still unacceptably small? At the same time, few people outside the industry know that nuclear power today generates more than a quarter of the total zero-carbon electricity in the world and this share continues to grow, or that nuclear medicine saves millions of human lives every year.

The session participants will discuss various aspects of positioning the nuclear industry, modern communication tools, successful projects in this area and interesting examples from other industries that make the nuclear industry attractive to a growing number of young people around the world.