The Institute of Nuclear Physics, a leading think-tank headquartered in Novosibirsk, in Siberia, has signed a 16 million euro contract with European partners for the development of advanced equipment to be used in the FAIR European Acceleration Center which is being put together in Germany, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing a source in the Institute.

The European Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) will be operating in Germany’s Darmstadt. It is an estimated one billion euro project comparable in size to the Large Hadron Collider (CERN). The project owners are hoping to launch experiments at FAIR in the early 2020’s.

“In late October, the Institute of Nuclear Physics inked a new sizable 16 million euro contract with FAIR for the development of magnetic elements for the project’s High Energy Beam Transferline (HEBT) channels,” RIA quoted the Institute as announcing. The Siberian think-tank is expected to provide these vital components for more than a kilometer of beam transfer channels.

“Europe’s leading laboratories participate in the construction of this complex. Russia is one of FAIR’s 15 member-states and the second largest funder of the huge system after Germany. The Institute of Nuclear Physics is a key Russian participant,” the source said.