Nuclear research Researcher: Without Russia, research at Cern could be delayed
At the end of November, cooperation with Russian research institutes at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) based in Geneva will come to an end. This could have consequences for science, warns a German scientist.
03.11.2024, 04:31
SDA
"Russia has strong expertise in engineering," Beate Heinemann from the German Electron Synchrotron (Desy) in Hamburg told the German Press Agency (dpa). "It's not that certain research will now become impossible due to the end of the collaboration, but it will make things more difficult and there could be delays." Heinemann is Director of the Desy Particle Physics division.
"We hope that there will be no major loss in the scientific yield," the German Cern research director Joachim Mnich told dpa. Russian scientists had transferred their expertise to colleagues as far as possible. "We cannot continue to operate one detector component, but that is not a big gap," said Mnich.
In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Cern member states decided last year to end their cooperation with Russian research institutes. Desy, a center for the study of matter, had already decided to do so in 2022. "This was partly because we were concerned that the Russian research institutes would suddenly be politically instrumentalized in a different way than before," explained Heinemann.
