Radium Institute (RIAN)

Founding and Structure

The State Radium Institute (Gosudarstvennyi Radievyi Institut, GRI) was created in January 1922 by merging Petrograd's three radiological establishments: the Radium Division of the State Roentgenological and Radiological Institute, the Academy of Sciences Radium Laboratory, and the Radiochemical Laboratory of the Geological and Mineralogical Museum, all under Vernadsky's leadership. Vernadsky served as director, Khlopin as head of radiochemistry, and Lev Mysovsky as head of physics. At the opening session, Vernadsky declared the institute's mission: to direct work toward mastering atomic energy, "the most powerful source of force to which humanity has approached in its history."

Europe's First Cyclotron

In 1932, George Gamow and Mysovsky proposed scaling up Lawrence's 25 cm cyclotron to a 1-metre machine. Approved by the institute's Academic Council, construction involved the Bolshevik factory (magnet steel forgings) and Elektrosila works (coil windings) in Leningrad. Kurchatov joined the project; the first accelerated beam was achieved in 1937, reaching the design values of 4 MeV and 40 μA just before the war: the first cyclotron in Europe.

The Atomic Bomb Project

Building on its pre-war achievements, the Khlopin-chaired Commission on the Uranium Problem was formed in 1940. After the war, on 5 December 1945, the institute received its formal assignment: clarify plutonium chemistry, test separation by co-precipitation with carriers, and deliver an industrial plutonium extraction flowsheet by July 1946. By May 1946 the team delivered the acetate-fluoride technology, based on Khlopin's law of co-crystallisation, using cheap acetic acid rather than the bismuth-based American method. This became the foundation of the Mayak reprocessing plant, accepted into operation on 1 March 1949. The institute also laid the groundwork for Soviet neutron physics, fission physics, gamma-defectoscopy, and radiation dosimetry.