JINR said a committee of member states considers the development of cooperation with Germany as a priority and has suggested that Germany considers the possibility of full membership in JINR.
JINR has 18 member states. Germany is one of six associate members with Egypt, Hungary, Italy, South Africa and Serbia.
JINR said there was already “significant synergy” in many areas because of a roadmap signed between Russia and Germany in 2018 for the development of scientific and technical cooperation. The roadmap saw German partners confirm their willingness to participate in NICA and in projects based on the PIK research reactor under construction at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in Gatchina, south of St Petersburg.
NICA, being built in Dubna, near Moscow, is one of Russia’s priority scientific “megaprojects” and is expected to be online before the end of 2022. Its development began in 2005, and construction started in 2013.
The estimated cost of the project is approximately $500m. The Russian state budget covers about 80% of its cost, while investors from Italy, Germany and the US contribute to the rest.
The NICA collider is an experimental facility, similar to Europe’s CERN in Switzerland. Its purpose is to help understand how protons and neutrons were formed in the universe and help research on extreme densities and temperatures.
According to NICA’s official website, the results of studies on the effect of ion beams on living organisms could also help the development of hadron therapy aimed at treating cancer in humans.