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- "Russia and Brazil are developing cooperation in nuclear sciences and pharmaceuticals"
"Russia and Brazil are developing cooperation in nuclear sciences and pharmaceuticals"
The BRICS countries are expanding cooperation in mega-science projects, the Russian Federation and Brazil are strengthening cooperation in nuclear sciences, in particular on medical isotopes used in pharmaceutical preparations. Another area of joint work in which the Latin American state is interested is natural barrier materials, which are used for the disposal of nuclear waste. Stepan Kalmykov, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Scientific Director of the Chemical Faculty of Moscow State University, told Izvestia about this, as well as about the International Festival "Science 0+", which will be held in Brazil in the summer.
"We need to use the opportunities that the BRICS countries give us"
— What joint scientific projects are Brazil and the Russian Federation implementing?
— Russia and Brazil are developing cooperation in nuclear sciences and pharmaceuticals.
Brazil is very actively cooperating with Rosatom on medical isotopes used in pharmaceutical preparations. We have established a large number of supplies, and this is the result that has already been released from the laboratory and turned into commercial implementation. The creation of new medicines can also be called a promising area that is actively developing. And we plan to launch new areas of cooperation.
A nurse packs radiopharmaceuticals.
— And it's not just about medicine?
- of course. A very large area is megascience installations. In particular, synchrotrons. These are the synchrotrons that are being built and already exist, on the one hand, in Russia. On the other hand, there is an active Sirius synchrotron in Brazil (a ring synchrotron light source at the Brazilian Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory. — Izvestia).
In my opinion, cooperation in this area has great prospects. For chemists, the use of megascience is the key to very successful experiments, and interaction here will be extremely useful.
— Was the Brazilian installation able to partially replace the European Synchrotron in Grenoble?
"That's right. In general, it is now necessary to use the opportunities provided by the BRICS countries in every possible way. And those that we give to the BRICS countries for joint research on mega-science installations. This is a very important component in my research in the field of radiochemistry.
Sirius Laboratory in Brazil
— In what other areas are we increasing our cooperation?
— This can be seen by the number of joint events. Not only because Brazil currently holds the BRICS presidency. There will be a rectors' congress now. Then there's the science festival. Several hundred people will travel from Russia to Brazil. Representatives of universities, academic institutions, and technology companies. On the one hand, they will have a big business program. On the other hand, it is the popularization of our achievements. Events are planned for schoolchildren, their parents, and students. Films, achievements in scientific and technological industries, and so on will be shown.
This is what is called, in a good way, soft power. Science, education, art, and sports are what bring people together.
— The final of the 59th International Mendeleev Olympiad in Chemistry was recently held in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. What is the purpose of these competitions?
— Competitions have been held since 1967. The Mendeleev Olympiad is the successor to the All—Union Chemistry Olympiad. This year, 40 countries took part in it. If we talk about goals, then, on the one hand, it is the popularization of chemistry, the desire to show that chemistry is beautiful, it is not dangerous, and this is the future of humanity. That the same drugs are chemistry. The materials that surround us are chemistry. Energy is chemistry. On the other hand, it is a competition for children, that is, it encourages them to learn modern science.
It is also important for us that this Olympiad is international, but it is organized by Russian organizations — the Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Andrey Melnichenko Foundation. This is Russia's positioning in the international arena as a leading country in the field of education, educational resources, technology and science.
Brazil. Belo Horizonte. Participants during the performance of practical tasks within the framework of the 59th International Mendeleev Olympiad of Schoolchildren in Chemistry on the territory of the Mangabeyras Palace.
— As part of the last Olympiad, you gave a lecture on new nuclear energy technologies, in particular green ones. What's the point?
— The only prospect for obtaining highly concentrated green, environmentally friendly, clean energy is the development of nuclear technologies and the development of nuclear energy. And, of course, here we are talking about the most important tasks that scientists in the industry face — radiochemists, engineers, and physicists. In particular, about research on the closure of the nuclear fuel cycle for waste recycling. That is, how we can use modern technologies for, relatively speaking, separate waste collection.
It's like with separate garbage collection, only the process is at a high-tech level. All the radionuclides that are formed in the reactor may have a different fate. And we need to develop chemical technologies in order to collect them into separate fractions. Something will be irradiated again, something will be buried, we will leave something, because of this we will get something new and useful, and so on.
"Our Brazilian colleagues are very interested in our developments in the field of nuclear waste disposal."
— Is there any cooperation with Brazil in this area?
— Rosatom cooperates, in particular, in what we call the nuclear fuel cycle backend. This is the final stage related to waste disposal. For example, choosing a suitable site for this. There are many factors that influence this process, from seismics to geochemistry, geology, and hydrology of the places that are supposed to be such sites.
We have a lot of experience in this regard. Rosatom is implementing a program, which I am in charge of, to select special natural barrier materials. They should prevent any possibility of radionuclides entering the environment. A multi-barrier system is used, and each of them must work and prevent the spread of radioactivity beyond the control zone.
We apply nature-like technologies based on clays and their mixtures and explore their critical characteristics of industrial deposits in Russia and neighboring countries. Our Brazilian colleagues are very interested in our developments in the field of nuclear waste disposal.
The Angra 3 nuclear reactor at the Angra Nuclear Power Plant in Angra dos Reis, Brazil.
— Have any specific projects already been discussed?
— We visited the National Atomic Energy Commission in Rio de Janeiro and discussed joint projects with colleagues there. And now we are considering the forms of cooperation. We have a great relationship with China. There is a joint university of Moscow State University and Beijing Polytechnic Institute in Shenzhen, which can also become a base for fundamental research in these areas.
Preventing the spread of waste and impacts on the biosphere is what is called science for future generations. This is a science that unites people in many countries, because those who develop their nuclear power industry face the problems of radioactive waste in one way or another.
— In your lecture, you also touched upon the topic of calculations. Not so long ago, the President of the Russian Federation instructed to develop proposals for the creation of a national supercomputing center. What tasks will such a structure solve?
— There are a lot of tasks. Chemists make quantum chemical calculations of many properties of molecules. Before conducting any experiments, thousands of options are calculated in order to select the optimal characteristics. And then experiments are done not with hundreds, but with ten molecules. This significantly reduces the time of scientists and allows them to quickly reach the real technologies that humanity needs.
The second is, of course, artificial intelligence, the use of neural networks and machine learning to solve a wide variety of problems related to chemistry and physics. Big data analysis. And there are a huge number of applications here, ranging from text search by formulas, properties, spectra of substances, and so on, to processing large amounts of data, catalytic systems, extraction systems, technologies, and so on.
It takes years manually, and minutes on a supercomputer, and that's the real payoff.
Stepan Kalmykov
— Will the Russian supercomputing center be in demand in the world?
- of course. This is a general trend, and it's not just related to some kind of scientific fashion. It is associated with speeding up calculations by orders of magnitude. Just imagine, there are now 16 million compounds in chemistry that are officially registered. And 14 million sources of information — magazines, books, patents, and so on — in which they are described. It is clear that no one can handle such arrays of data. And a supercomputer solves this problem. Therefore, the creation of the future center is very promising, and it will be in demand all over the world.
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