Νew Technologies and Innovation Development in Russia

George1 wrote:Symantec and Skolkovo pen partnership agreement Source: Russia Beyond the Headlines - http://rbth.co.uk/news/2014/07/19/symantec_and_skolkovo_pen_partnership_agreement_38353.html)

The Russian government has unveiled plans to invest part of the Russians’ pension fund deposits in VC funds and also in securities and other financial instruments that high-tech companies have, reported the Russian business daily Vedomosti.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has reportedly asked the Central Bank of Russia, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Finance to put together details for investing pension money in high technologies by November 1. The government’s Expert Council is said to be considering allowing the use of both pension reserves and deposits to inject in high-tech sectors up to 1% of the total Pension Fund money.

According to a recent Council report, Russia’s accumulative pension system had about $92bn in 2013—which means that innovation projects and venture firms may receive as much as a billion dollars in investments from Russia’s Pension Fund. It is an amount comparable to the entire volume of investment in the national venture market last year, estimated RVC, the government fund of funds for innovation.

Ruselectronics, the government-owned high-tech umbrella company, has announced plans to invest more than $5.8bn in its innovation development between now and 2020.

The state-run giant is expected to develop and complete 92 projects in its focal areas, its corporate website said.

“The new innovation development program will help us boost sales revenues, take our products to the global markets, and make sure Russia gets a foothold in new market segments and ultimately takes a leadership role in a number of technology areas,” Ruselectronics CEO Andrei Zverev said.

Of the total investment amount, Ruselectronics wants to pump more than $3bn in technical modernization of its assets across Russia and then inject about $2.3bn in R&D, with the rest going to infrastructure improvements, better staff training, and international economic collaboration.

In 2014 Russia started the Fund for Support and Development of scientific and technical capacity "Rusnauka", created on the initiative of members of the public and the business community.
The main objectives of the Fund are to support inventive and scientific initiatives in the Russian society and the wide popularization of scientific and technical work, which should promote the development of the Russian economy on the path of innovation.

Russian scientists have developed an experimental type of pavement called seroasfaltobeton. On the development of the standard will spend about 12 million rubles. Feature of the new coating is seroasfaltobeton that can be put in sub-zero temperatures. This type of paving asphalt involves adding a mixture of bitumen and 30% of the modified sulfur. It is expected that due to the covering of seroasfaltobetona roadbed will be less deformed and better withstand the studded tires. Pavement will also be more resistant to extreme high and low temperaturam.Eksperty note that their properties seroasfaltobeton turns the same as the traditional hot bitumen, however, the temperature of its production and laying 30-40 degrees cooler.
As an experiment, so the asphalt in 2002 has been successfully laid on Krylatskom bridge in Moscow at minus 26 degrees. In recent years, in Moscow using seroasfaltobetonnyh mixtures were built nine test sites on the Ring Road, in Taganka tunnel and at the intersection of Lobachevsky Michurinsky prospectus.

Russian Railways, the national railroad operator, has partnered up with IT experts at the Sarov Nuclear Center in the mid-Volga area to develop Russia’s own Linux-based computer operating system called “Synergy,” the Russian business daily Vedomosti reported.

According to a spokesperson for Russian Railways, the cooperation with the Sarov Nuclear Center calls for the development of a basic platform to develop and execute business apps. The platform is expected to include “a Linux kernel based OS version compatible with the other components of the platform.”

The Nuclear Center started the work by developing an operating system for Rosatom, Russia’s umbrella company for nuclear energy assets and the Center’s main boss. The initiative was originally aimed at enhancing Rosatom’s cyber-security and enabling the replacement of imported software for domestic products.

It was later found that Russian Railways intended to do likewise; and the decision was made to pool the efforts.

A pilot version of the new Russian operating system is said to have already been programmed; it is now being tested in Sarov, Vedomosti underscored.

Based on a Linux kernel, Synergy is a way of kissing goodbye to Windows, a system currently being used at the Sarov Nuclear Center, Vedomosti analysts believe.
The parties involved in the project have declined to comment on the cost of developing the new system or the number of programmers brought on board to do the job.

KomissarBojanchev wrote:Has russia made any use or developed any new 3D printers of its own? They'll be eventually vital for an economy to stay competitive in the future?

Owing to the low neutron moderation by heavy lead, it is possible
to expand the fuel lattice without affecting the reactor neutronics,
to increase the coolant flow section in fuel assemblies, and to
raise the level of power removed by natural lead circulation. The
lead circuit itself giving off its heat continuously to naturally
circulating air and thereby to the atmosphere, will never be
overheated by residual heat.

kvs wrote:http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Design-completed-for-prototype-fast-reactor-0209147.html



Russia has completed the design for the BRES-300 lead cooled fast neutron breeder reactor.    Russia is the world leader in
such designs and has had lead-bismuth cooled reactors on its nuclear submarines.   But don't bother looking this up on wiki where some
experimental design from Belgium that has not been built yet gets most of the attention.

The advantage of using lead as a coolant is that it boils 1740 Celsius.   In other words, it is physically impossible to have a meltdown since the
passive cooling will never let the fuel assembly get anywhere near this temperature.   Sodium coolant is OK, but it has a much lower boiling point.

http://www.crines.titech.ac.jp/projects/gif/2_1_4.pdf

Lead is transparent to neutrons so it is the ideal coolant for a fast breeder reactor.

Owing to the low neutron moderation by heavy lead, it is possible
to expand the fuel lattice without affecting the reactor neutronics,
to increase the coolant flow section in fuel assemblies, and to
raise the level of power removed by natural lead circulation. The
lead circuit itself giving off its heat continuously to naturally
circulating air and thereby to the atmosphere, will never be
overheated by residual heat.

magnumcromagnon wrote:
Is it true, spent rods and depleted uranium can be put in front of a reactor and become useful again? Maybe this will have it's uses if the START treaty falls apart.

kvs wrote:

magnumcromagnon wrote:
Is it true, spent rods and depleted uranium can be put in front of a reactor and become useful again? Maybe this will have it's uses if the START treaty falls apart.

That is the whole idea behind a breeder reactor.  Spent fuel is reprocessed and placed together with fresh fuel rods.   Over a period of time it is enriched by neutron absorption.   For example "useless" Uranium 238 becomes Plutonium 239.   This really is the modern equivalent of alchemy.   But we are not going to be breeding gold from lead anytime soon

As noted in the PDF I linked, breeder reactors with closed fuel cycles get 100 times more energy out of a kilogram of Uranium ore than conventional single cycle reactors.   There is also much less and much shorter lived waste from breeders.   Breeder reactors can burn the so-called "waste" piling up in the obsolete reactors deployed around the world today.  

Breeder reactors give Russia nuclear energy independence due to its lack of large Uranium reserves

magnumcromagnon wrote:

kvs wrote:

magnumcromagnon wrote:
Is it true, spent rods and depleted uranium can be put in front of a reactor and become useful again? Maybe this will have it's uses if the START treaty falls apart.

That is the whole idea behind a breeder reactor.  Spent fuel is reprocessed and placed together with fresh fuel rods.   Over a period of time it is enriched by neutron absorption.   For example "useless" Uranium 238 becomes Plutonium 239.   This really is the modern equivalent of alchemy.   But we are not going to be breeding gold from lead anytime soon

As noted in the PDF I linked, breeder reactors with closed fuel cycles get 100 times more energy out of a kilogram of Uranium ore than conventional single cycle reactors.   There is also much less and much shorter lived waste from breeders.   Breeder reactors can burn the so-called "waste" piling up in the obsolete reactors deployed around the world today.  

Breeder reactors give Russia nuclear energy independence due to its lack of large Uranium reserves

It's interesting that the new breeder reactors Russia is developing has many of the same advantages as LFTR reactors have (using spent rods as fuel, exponentially better fuel efficiency, exponentially smaller amounts of waste created), now it makes a lot of sense that the Russians chose this path over LFTR, as this path should still allow the capability to produce warheads if deemed necessary (for better or worse that is something that LFTR's are not capable of).

BTW you mentioned about problems with Russia's uranium reserves, I believe I read somewhere that Russia still maintains an enriched uranium stockpile to produce 40,000 warheads rapidly. Whether that claim is accurate Russia is also a significant member of the Eurasian Customs Union, and so is Kazakhstan (also a CSTO member) the world leading uranium producing country (which produces nearly twice the amount of uranium ore as the second largest producer, Canada), who's President Nazarbayev was the guy who first proposed the Customs Union, so no worries of uranium shortage either way.

Mike E wrote:

magnumcromagnon wrote:

kvs wrote:

magnumcromagnon wrote:
Is it true, spent rods and depleted uranium can be put in front of a reactor and become useful again? Maybe this will have it's uses if the START treaty falls apart.

That is the whole idea behind a breeder reactor.  Spent fuel is reprocessed and placed together with fresh fuel rods.   Over a period of time it is enriched by neutron absorption.   For example "useless" Uranium 238 becomes Plutonium 239.   This really is the modern equivalent of alchemy.   But we are not going to be breeding gold from lead anytime soon

As noted in the PDF I linked, breeder reactors with closed fuel cycles get 100 times more energy out of a kilogram of Uranium ore than conventional single cycle reactors.   There is also much less and much shorter lived waste from breeders.   Breeder reactors can burn the so-called "waste" piling up in the obsolete reactors deployed around the world today.  

Breeder reactors give Russia nuclear energy independence due to its lack of large Uranium reserves

It's interesting that the new breeder reactors Russia is developing has many of the same advantages as LFTR reactors have (using spent rods as fuel, exponentially better fuel efficiency, exponentially smaller amounts of waste created), now it makes a lot of sense that the Russians chose this path over LFTR, as this path should still allow the capability to produce warheads if deemed necessary (for better or worse that is something that LFTR's are not capable of).

BTW you mentioned about problems with Russia's uranium reserves, I believe I read somewhere that Russia still maintains an enriched uranium stockpile to produce 40,000 warheads rapidly. Whether that claim is accurate Russia is also a significant member of the Eurasian Customs Union, and so is Kazakhstan (also a CSTO member) the world leading uranium producing country (which produces nearly twice the amount of uranium ore as the second largest producer, Canada), who's President Nazarbayev was the guy who first proposed the Customs Union, so no worries of uranium shortage either way.

All of them? LFTR's still have big advantages over the lead-cooled designs... In fact, lead-cooling was hugely researched in the 50's by the West, but it was deemed to be of too much trouble to be of any real worth... It is an improvement over modern-day designs, but LFTR's? I don't see why Russia would care for that ability, as they already have the capability to produce thermonuclear devices by the truck load... - That is a somewhat well-known conspiracy theory here in MURICA', that we didn't go for LFTR's because they couldn't refine nuclear material into weapons-grade "yellow cake". If this is true or not I don't know... (LFTR's should be much safer and more efficient, never mind cleaner than lead-cooled designs. There are many other advantages as well.)

this would be reasonable claim if russia had those ships ,but it doesnt nor it will have them in numbers for a loong time, but like you said their slow contruction time is not important

higurashihougi wrote:I am sorry if any missed any of the previous posts in this thread. But I would like to know about Russia's achievement in the field of renewable energy, aside from nuclear reactor.

And the field of environment, carbon output, and similar things, too.

After all, oil and uranium do not have unlimited amount, and I don't think the thaw of Arctic ice is good for any country with coast, including Russia.