Doubna

Doubna ( Russian Дубна in ) is a town of Russia, in the Oblast of Moscow. Doubna developed after the Second world war from one of the greatest nuclear research centres with the world. The city counts 61 600 inhabitants in 2005.

Geography

The town of Doubna is to 187 m of altitude, to approximately 125 km in the north of Moscow. Doubna is the city more in north of the oblast of Moscow. It is crossed by the the Volga and is immediately downstream from the Réservoir of Ivankovo, whose stopping through the Volga forms the only bridge which connects the two parts of the city. To the west, Doubna is limited by the Channel of Moscow, while to the east the city is limited by the Doubna river.

History

The decision to build an accelerator with proton for nuclear research was made by the Soviet government in 1946. The site of Doubna was selected because of its relative insulation of Moscow and the presence of the powerplant close to Ivankovo. The scientific leader of the project was Igor Kourtchatov. But the general inspector of the nuclear research center, comprising the construction of a city, a road and a railway to Moscow, was the chief of the NKVD, Lavrenti Beria. After three years of intensive work, in which took part of many prisoners of the Gulag, condemned to xtravaux forced, the accelerator was completed the December 13rd 1949.

The town of Doubna was officially inaugurated in 1956, at the same time as the Institut unified of nuclear research, which had developed in a vast international research laboratory, mainly dedicated to the Physique of the particles, with the physical of the heavy ions, to the synthesis of the transuranic elements and to the Radiobiologie. Remarkable physicists of the 20th century worked at the Institute, of which Nikolai Bogoliubov, Vladimir Veksler, Bruno Pontecorvo. Several elementary particles like the element 118, there were discovered or studied. The name of element 105, the Dubnium, is thus derived from the name of the city.

Economy

Before the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the unified Institute of nuclear research (Объединённыйинститутядерныхисследований, Russian ОИЯИ) and the MKB Radouga, a center of study and manufacture of cruise missiles, were the principal employers of Doubna. Their importance since strongly decreased and the city knows a raised unemployment rate, in spite of the creation of new companies. Ambitious project intendeds to be made of Doubna a Russian silicon valley were announced, and some data-processing service companies actually settled there, like Luxoft.

Since the fall of the USSR, the economic situation was degraded and the unemployment reached the 30% according to the criteria of the International office of work.

Others

Doubna has the largest statue of Lénine in the world, high 15 meters. The twin statue of Stalin, which accompanied it, was demolished in 1963 during the Déstalinisation.

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