Nuclear Physics, Leningrad Institute of

(full name, B. P. Konstantinov Leningrad Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR), a scientific research institute in the city of Gatchina, Leningrad Oblast, where studies are conducted in nuclear physics, the physics of high-energy particles, and solid-state physics, as well as in radiobiology and molecular biology. It was founded in 1971 by B. P. Konstantinov on the basis of the nuclear laboratories of the Physicotechnical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The existence of the weak nucleon-nucleon interaction was experimentally proved by researchers at the institute (working together with researchers from the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics). The Leningrad Institute of Nuclear Physics has a 16-megawatt VVR-M water-moderated water-cooled research reactor, with a thermal neutron flux of up to 3 × 10¹⁴ neutrons · cm²/sec, a 1-gigaelectron volt phasotron with a current of up to 1 microampere, and a computerized system for automated control of experiments.