The device is not a friend to the device – Newspaper Kommersant No. 5 (7450) dated 01/13/2023

The White House plans to increase grant support for updating the instrumentation base of science by 3.7 billion rubles in 2023 to 15.5 billion rubles. About 200 scientific organizations will be able to receive money, a prerequisite is the purchase of Russian equipment. In 2021, its share was about 10%, in 2022 – about 15%, in 2023 the figure should grow to 20%. According to the head of the Ministry of Education and Science Valery Falkov, updating the instrument base in today’s realities is focused not only on the production of competitive technologies, but also on reducing dependence on foreign components. In some areas, it reaches 90%, which is especially critical in the face of sanctions.

The government plans for a third, up to 15.5 billion rubles. (by 3.7 billion rubles), to increase the volume of grants for updating the instrumental base of science in 2023. Funds will be able to receive about 200 scientific organizations within the framework of the national project “Science and Universities”, explained Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko. At the same time, Russian equipment must be present in purchases: its minimum share in 2022 was about 15%, for 2023 the threshold is at least 20%. Earlier, Vladimir Putin, at a meeting with young scientists, complained that the Russian Federation is highly dependent on foreign instrumentation (up to 90%). The situation was exacerbated by sanctions, and in 2022 a road map was approved until 2030, and the Ministry of Education and Science, together with the Ministry of Industry and Trade, developed the federal project “Development of domestic instrumentation for scientific research.”

The largest amounts of applications for 2023 – 567.5 million and 454 million rubles – fall on Moscow State University and the Physical Institute. P. N. Lebedev RAS (FIAN). According to FIAN Director Nikolai Kolachevsky, the largest purchase (about 80 million rubles) will be the modernization of the growth facility for microelectronics. In general, the share of Russian devices in the application of the Institute is more than 30%, including laser systems, optics, installations for creating micro- and nanostructures, as well as vacuum and technological equipment. NRNU MEPhI Rector Vladimir Shevchenko recalls that in November 2022, the University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Bauman Moscow State Technical University, MIET, and others united into the Scientific Instrumentation consortium for the sake of its revival. “The potential demand is great: in recent years, scientific instruments have been purchased in the Russian Federation in the amount of about 30 billion rubles. per year, about 80% of it was imported,” he notes. A shortage of a number of devices that are not currently supplied to the country will begin to be felt fairly soon. The consortium is discussing the production of dozens of commodity items, work has already begun on 15 of them. MIPT Rector Dmitry Livanov notes that in addition to high-tech installations with a service life of decades, research teams need chemicals and consumables, the lack of analogues of which in the Russian Federation can paralyze research – the consortium must solve this problem as well.

Recall that the “May” presidential decree No. 204 required by 2024 to update the instrumental base of science by at least 50% – this was the basis for the ambitions to obtain world-class scientific results (the national project “Science and Universities” should introduce the Russian Federation into the top five leading countries on scientific discoveries in priority areas). At the same time, as previously noted in the HSE ISSEK, information on the state of the scientific instrumentation base is limited, and according to the 2016 survey, less than half (46.8% by value) belongs to the category of the latest equipment (up to five years). The Russian Research Institute of Economics, Politics and Law in the Scientific and Technical Sphere (RIEPP) told Kommersant that the average age of equipment in shared use centers (CCU) is ten years, and “the degree of obsolescence of the CCU instrument base varies greatly: older total (18–29 years) equipment for astronomical research, nuclear physics and high energy physics, radiation analytical instruments”. They also estimated the need for domestic scientific equipment at less than 1% of the total need: almost all of it is purchased abroad. Thus, in equipment for spectrometry of nuclear magnetic resonance, electron paramagnetic resonance, astronomical research, respondents fix the absence of Russian analogues – or the need for a serious technological re-equipment of their manufacturers.

Venera Petrova