The first high-power laser of Europe and the second in the world will become operational in June on the Magurele platform, the delegate minister for Higher Education and Research, Mihnea Costoiu said yesterday at the opening event of the 30th Congress of the Romanian Association of Urology, Mediafax reports. “Medicine is one of the sectors we will support in the future and at Magurele, with extremely generous sums. In fact, the first applications will begin very soon, probably in June we will inaugurate the first high-power laser in Europe, of one petawatt, the most powerful laser in Europe and the second in the world, after that of Barclay-Livermore, which has 1.7 petawatt, and will which be used first to medical purposes. Probably in June we will have the official inauguration by using this laser,” Mihnea Costoiu mentioned. The laser that will become operational in June on the Magurele platform is not part of the ELI-NP project – a nuclear physics research centre that will be constructed in Magurele too. On the same occasion, the delegate minister spoke about the inclusion of medical universities and centres in the academic forum of the project of the Magurele laser (ELI-NP). “(…) I recently signed, less than one month ago, at the government, contracts of research, for supporting the research activity, laboratories and research centres, and also of supporting those who prepare their doctoral theses and those who completed them, worth approximately EUR 300 M. Out of this sum of EUR 300 M, almost EUR 40 M are destined to research operations and to supporting young medical scientists,” Costoiu explained.

ELI-NP (Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Physics), a nuclear physics research centre that will be constructed at Magurele, is one of the three pillars of the European project ELI that will become the world’s most advanced structure destined to studies related to photonic radiation with extreme characteristics. The other two centres – ELI-Beamlines and ELI-ALPS – will be built at Prague (Czech Republic) and Szeged (Hungary).

The construction of the ELI-NP research centre at Magurele should be completed by autumn 2014, thus allowing the installation of the two high-power lasers and the gamma radiation system, so the research centre becomes operational in 2017.

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