Spending by Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom for research and development (R&D) this year will remain at the 2015 level and will be about 4.5% of total proceeds, according to Vyacheslav Pershukov, Rosatom's deputy director general and director of innovations management. He told journalists at a forum on knowledge management on 13 April that financing of R&D last year had come from three sources: Rosatom's own funds, federal target programmes (federal budget funds), and proceeds from civil developments of companies within the nuclear weapons complex (NWC).
This year, the R&D volume and, correspondingly, state budget financing through federal target programmes is reduced. The budget finance which remains is for capital costs to build new facilities in the field of "megascience" or in the field of nuclear and radiation safety, Petrshukov specified. However, the number of R&D orders undertaken by NWC companies for the civil sector. "has sharply grown". "At present, we are slightly below 4.5% of the proceeds but the target is to bring it to 4.5% before the end of the year," he concluded. In 2014 the total proceeds of Rosatom were RUB618.3bn ($9.4bn) and in 2015 about RUB650bn.
