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The 7th CNCP-Russia Conference, Velikiy Novgorod, July 2009The annual CNCP-Russia Conference was held this year in Velikiy Novgorod from 14-16 July. The Conference, the seventh in the series, reviewed the results of Programme activities over the past 12 months. Taking part were representatives of City Administrations and companies from six of the Rosatom Closed Cities, as well as from the British Government and the CNCP Management Team. An innovation at this conference was a wideranging presentation and analysis of projects which have been completed. A series of presentations by representatives of small businesses alongside reports from the Rosatom enterprises, an established feature of CNCP conferences, was another development. The small business leaders, some of whom were engaged in the commercializing science-based innovations, spoke about their practical experience as private entrepreneurs operating in Closed Cities. The Conference was opened by the Director of the CNCP Programme, Trevor Hayward, and the Rosatom Coordinator, Vladimir Sterekhov. Trevor Hayward stressed that the proliferation of expertise relating to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is one of the most difficult non-proliferation challenges to address. Much had been achieved in the framework of the Global Partnership, but the threat remained high, and terrorists had made no secret of their desire to acquire and use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear material. WMD aspirations remained of grave concern. Great Britain would fulfill all of the obligations that it had committed itself to and, the economic crisis notwithstanding, the CNCP programme would continue until mid 2012 - as had been planned from the start. Contracts for grant funding for new projects would need to be signed by the end of this financial year, which is to say, by the end of March 2010. Support for projects which were in the process of implementation would continue thereafter. Vladimir Sterekhov called on those participating in the Conference to take part as actively as possible over the remainder of the year in the formulation of a portfolio of projects, and expressed his satisfaction with the work in hand: “I consider”, he said, “that much has been achieved and not only as concerns projects and jobs, but also as concerns changed attitudes”. CNCP Programme Leader, Patrick Gray, in his presentation outlined the development of the instruments which the CNCP team used to achieve the aims of the partnership. For example, supporting the creation of joint ventures involving foreign investors in Closed Cities had turned out to be unrealistic and had had to be dropped. Other initiatives had proved to be highly successful. For example, about eighty small business enterprises had been established in the territories which the Closed City municipal authorities were responsible for and all of the evidence suggested that the great majority of these would continue to develop. At this point, as we approach the final phase of CNCP activities, the need was to work together to reshape the methods employed by the Partnership. Forms of support which could be used effectively over the next three years to make the outcomes of the Programme even more successful had to be developed. A round table debate and many discussions during the Conference were dedicated to just this topic. The core of the Conference consisted of presentations by representatives of the City Administrations and nuclear centres from the six participating Rosatom Closed Cities on projects being implemented in the framework of the Programme. A significant proportion of these were already deeply integrated into the social and economic life of the Cities and the enterprises concerned. Practically all of the speakers stressed the great significance of the Programme and expressed the hope that it could be extended. They argued that because of the economic crisis and the restructuring of the nuclear complex, the employment prospects of former nuclear weapons specialists could well turn out to be significantly worse than had appeared likely at the start of the Programme. The largest of the fuel enrichment Kombinats, which is situated in Novouralsk, might become an example of this. Now, as the Novouralsk representative put it, with several thousand job losses in prospect, the need had become acute. On the other hand, experience of private enterprise and of the spinning out of non-core enterprises from large state corporations already exists in the Closed Cities. Presentations by representatives of small business with CNCP supported projects outlined some of the best examples of this. They included projects involving the manufacture of polymer products in Ozersk, and the development of a furniture industry in Seversk. Particular interest was aroused by a presentation by Vladimir Karuk, the Director of Binar Holding, a privately owned science-based manufacturing business founded in Sarov in 1989, which was created on a private innovation-oriented business incubator. A number of science-based businesses were being implemented here with support from CNCP. But it was not just examples of the successful commercialization of scientific discoveries which emerged from his presentation. Even more striking was a description of a format for taking innovations from the starting point through to mass production which had grown out of years of practical experience of working under the conditions which apply in a Closed City. In Vladimir Sterekhov’s opinion, “this was the most successful of all of the CNCP annual Conferences”, and demonstrated clearly how the participants were actively interested in constructive approaches. Possibly the approach of 2012 had sharpened awareness of the importance in human terms of the problems which the Programme addressed. If the issue of extending the work of the Partnership was raised in future, he believed that Rosatom would be in support. Phil Richards, the representative of the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who was taking part in a CNCP Conference for the first time, said that what he had seen was not only a good example of partnership work between our two countries, but also a real expression of friendly relations and common understanding. And that too was a very important result.
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