Prof. Vladimir Genchev, BAS team leader at CERN: Why don’t we send a scientific mission to CERN instead of soldiers to Afghanistan

- At Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, they are concerned about the low number of candidate students to get a degree in physics. Shall we have to import physicists soon?
- When a young person who has studied physics for five years at the university comes to work at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), he or she will get a monthly salary of BGN 290, some four or five times less than if they are employed at a bank. This policy is wrong and physicists in Bulgaria will disappear indeed. A university graduate in physics immediately finds a job abroad. Our Laboratory of High Energies at the Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy of BAS, which is connected with the projects implemented at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), employs 15 people and two DSc holders, eight of whom are currently abroad. I expect only two of them to return to Bulgaria.

- But why isn’t money allocated to scientific development in Bulgaria?
- Because politicians want to see results “tomorrow”, during their mandate, and get elected again. A scientific discovery may take 100 years to see its realisation. I think that some fields of science in Bulgaria will be closed. According to me, there will be no experts for that new reactor, projected to be built at Kozloduy or Belene. We will obviously seek experts from abroad. We have arrived at a situation when we cannot even grow tomatoes and peppers, let alone develop nuclear energy.

- Can you see a solution?
- Why don’t we send a scientific mission to CERN, say of about 100 young people. We have so far sent military contingents to Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Cambodia... Can anybody tell how much money has been spent and if there has been any benefit for Bulgaria. Iraq had to repay its debt to Bulgaria but we cancelled it. Both NATO and CERN are intergovernmental organisations. Our participation in both has been ratified by Parliament. We were obliged to participate in NATO by contract. The situation concerning CERN is the same, I can show you the convention. A scientific mission will cost less than a military one.

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