Saturday, May 21, 2022

Valodya's Meeting With The Head of Rosatom State Corporation Alexei Likhachev

kremlin.ru  |  Vladimir Putin: Alexei Evgenievich, this year, in December, 15 years have passed since the law on the creation of the Rosatom Corporation was signed. During this time, a lot of work has been done.

Alexander Likhachev : Yes. We regard the date of the establishment of the state corporation as a very memorable one for us.

In general, the industry is in its 77th year, we are the same age as the Great Victory, but at the same time, the creation of the state corporation marked a completely new stage in the development of the industry. Indeed, a single management mechanism was created from a group of enterprises with common economic indicators, with a unique corporate culture. At the same time, nuclear competencies were combined - from uranium mining to the creation and operation of nuclear power plants. And of course, new divisions were created literally from scratch: machine-building, logistics, digital, and a number of others.

If we talk about performance indicators for 15 years, then you can’t call it anything other than a “quantum leap”: a 4.5-fold increase in revenue, a five-fold increase in labor productivity, investments are growing in a special way - a 15-fold increase in annual investments. Science and research are actively developing, we have 13 times the annual growth of patents.

Over the past five years, we have actively entered new products and the global market. Revenue for five years on new products has almost doubled, foreign revenue has grown by one and a half times.

Vladimir Putin: The most important thing is to increase labor productivity.

Alexander Likhachev: Labor productivity is growing at a faster rate, [faster] than wages, this is very important.

And digital revenue grew a hundredfold. This, of course, with a low base. We will continue to develop, of course.

In the past year, we have a number of regular record indicators. With the 100% fulfillment of the state defense order, the proceeds reached 1.5 trillion, and this is only in the open part, that is, naturally, we have much more. The record is 222 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. Commissioning of new blocks, the second Leningrad, the first Belarusian blocks. And the Northern Sea Route also set a record of transportation - almost 35 million tons.

We are implementing the decisions taken at your meeting on the Northern Sea Route. Under the leadership of the Government, we have already moved forward in the construction of nuclear-powered icebreakers, an ATO [nuclear technological service] vessel, and in the creation of a unified navigation management system on the Northern Sea Route. And I hope that in the shortest possible time we will put this work, as they say, on the usual track.

In the first quarter of this year, we have a serious increase: for the same electricity - plus two percent; first-quarter revenue for new products grew 26 percent and foreign products grew 13 percent.

On the other hand, we understand that we have been living and working under completely new conditions in recent months and will continue to work this way, so I would like to draw special attention to a few points.

Vladimir Putin: Please.

Alexander Likhachev: On international projects. We continue to implement all our international projects as long as they go according to plan. We see the risks with certain individual projects, develop appropriate compensatory measures. I hope that the vast majority of the projects will be successfully completed.

We have reached the second place in uranium mining in the world in recent years. We confidently hold the first place in terms of enrichment and conversion and are consistently among the top three in terms of fuel fabrication. In all areas there are groundwork aimed at further development.

We continue cooperation with the  IAEA , we participate in the international large thermonuclear project in France (ITER). And I want to say again that in this sense, the international nuclear community is not breaking ties yet, as long as this cooperation is developing.

According to the internal agenda. Our main service, apart from the state defense order, is nuclear energy. In ten years, we have built 11 units and achieved 20 percent of the electricity in the country. You gave us a plan to increase the share to 25 percent, and by increasing the share to 25 percent, we have to build another 16 innovation blocks in the horizon until 2035. The government approved the General Scheme, so we understand where and what to build.

I also want to thank you from the industry for adopting a decree on April 14 to extend our national project until 2030. This is indeed a very serious decision, it also creates a technological platform for the fourth generation of nuclear energy, and, most importantly, gives us the opportunity to build a specific object on earth. This is the Seversk project "Breakthrough", this is a multi-purpose fast research reactor, this is a tokamak fusion facility with reactor technologies, a prototype of tomorrow's fusion, this is a number of experimental reactors, and, of course, this is cooperation with Roskosmos, including on rocket engines for near space, for deep space. All this will be included in the extended national project.

What is important to emphasize: 95 percent of the Russian nuclear power plant, as they say, is made in Russia, and five percent are not critical. We see criticism at half a percent of our cost – electrical engineering, electronics, some types of diesel equipment, some types of pumping equipment, and in principle, we are already creating import substitution alliances with businesses.

First thought. Russian nuclear technologies are import-independent. And we don't see any limiting factors here.

Second thought. We will place at least a trillion rubles a year outside the industry as orders for the implementation of our national project. This, of course, is a very serious vector for the development of both engineering and the economy as a whole. And not only, as they say, in large orders, but also in innovation, the nuclear industry has always been famous for its advanced developments.

Vladimir Putin: Exactly.

A. Likhachev: I remember very well how in Soviet times, even under the conditions of the Iron Curtain, both mathematical modeling and work on security systems developed - all this gave impetus to the creation of a whole program of new products.

I myself was surprised to learn that over the past year we have satisfied the needs of more than 2600 Russian companies and enterprises in high-tech products, that is, the Russian industry is already returning a huge stock to us as new innovative orders and directions.

I would like to share the most important of them, in my opinion. At the same meeting on the Arctic, remember, NOVATEK management raised the issue of LNG equipment. We have built the first test stand in Europe at the Efremov NIIEFA in St. Petersburg, a solution has been prepared and implemented for cryogenic heat exchangers. This is the heart of all liquefaction technology. We have learned how to make medium-tonnage ones, and I think we will learn how to make large-tonnage ones as well.

We are actively receiving requests from the oil and gas industry both for specific equipment, and in general for new approaches to technologies, including in the production of hard-to-recover hydrocarbons. Such work is underway, and, for example, we have exemplary cooperation with Gazprom Neft.

We have completely closed the chain in composites and are moving on to the production of specific, quite modern medical equipment.

Vladimir Putin: We helped a lot of people with composites right away.

Alexander Likhachev: Yes.

We are moving forward in digital terms, creating alliances with enterprises, both small and private Russian companies, large companies, Rostec, and Russian Railways.

We ourselves will be two years ahead of your instructions: as early as 2023, one hundred percent of software purchases for critical infrastructure will be done, and we will generally transfer to Russian software at a faster pace.

Quantum progressed. We have been working on this topic for two years. According to experts, we have reduced the gap by about half from our foreign partners, competitors somewhere. But in general, in fact, for some technologies they entered the top three. There is an opinion that a separate type of quants, qudits, is the most promising for the corresponding processors, and now, along with the USA and Austria, we have achieved the corresponding prototype of a quantum processor. And by the way, they were the first to make a real program, that is, software for a quantum algorithm in the interests of the nuclear industry.

I cannot but say a few words about the environmental project, this is also a series of your instructions.

A system for controlling industrial waste of the first and second hazard class has been launched, more than 25 thousand users. Seven factories are being set up on the ground throughout the Russian Federation for processing, and I am sure that we will put things in order in this direction.

Plus work with heritage. We completed last September in Chelyabinsk the work on the landfill for household waste. We are going to Krasny Bor for practical work. And all the necessary priority work was carried out both in Usolye-Sibirsky and at the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill.

Vladimir Putin: And what did they do in Usolye-Sibirsky?

Alexei Likhachev: The mercury electrolysis shop has been completely dismantled there, and all the consequences have been eliminated. We started working with the oil lens, where there were dangers of waste going to the Angara. We have prepared all the design work in order to begin full-scale system liquidation this year. There were several dozen extremely dangerous wells, and, in fact, no one knows what was stored in them and in what volumes. Therefore, their neutralization and blocking were also among the priorities.

And in conclusion I would like to say a few words about the team. Indeed, we are not just a technological leader, not just one of the leaders in the global nuclear industry. This is a unique team with its own traditions. We consistently occupy the first places in the ratings of employers. A very important indicator is engagement, the readiness of people to give more every day to work, which is at a level that even exceeds the best world indicators (84 percent). I would like to say that this figure has increased in recent weeks. That is, there is a certain rallying of the team, and people, rolling up their sleeves, get to work, see this as their contribution to solving the problems, the tasks that the country is facing today.

Vladimir Putin: Rosatom is certainly one of our technology leaders. I hope this trend continues.

We talked about materials – we helped many industries at once, from aircraft manufacturing to medicine.

Alexei Likhachev: Mr Putin, we are now very focused on the machine-building sector, we have strengthened our machine-building assets, and there are many orders.

And one more thought. The more pressure is put on us, the more work we have, the more the team is mobilized.

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