“SIDE-BY-SIDE AS EQUALS”

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Los Alamos Science Number 24 1996

“SIDE-BY-SIDEAS EQUALS”

Number 24 1996 Los Alamos Science 1

An unprecedented collaboration between the Russian and American Nuclear Weapons Laboratories to reduce the nuclear danger

“I’ve been waiting forty years for this”

Academician Yuli Borisovich Khariton Scientific Director Emeritus

Arzamas-16 (Sarov)

“Side-by-Side as Equals”—a round table

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Memories tend to be shortin this rapidly changingworld. It has been onlyfour years since the So-

viet Union collapsed and separatedinto independent states. Yet the U.S.-Soviet superpower struggle andthe threat of all-out nuclear war are

already matters for historical studies.Nuclear weapons stockpiles are beingreduced, and the end of the Cold Warhas enhanced global security. Never-theless, the collapse of the SovietUnion brought forward new dangers,primary among them being the ulti-mate fate of the old Soviet nuclear ar-senal and the increased threat of nu-clear proliferation.

The United States was able to actquickly: To support agreements byBush and Gorbachev during the fall of1991 that their respective countrieswould dismantle a large part of the ar-senals of the Cold War, Congresspassed legislation to help the SovietUnion destroy nuclear, chemical, andother weapons and establish safeguardsagainst proliferation. Department ofDefense (DoD) funds amounting to400 million dollars per year were redi-rected into the so-called “Nunn-Lugar”program (named after Senators SamNunn and Richard Lugar who initiatedthe legislation). After the Soviet col-lapse in December 1991 and in subse-quent years, the scope of the Nunn-

Lugar program was extended to pro-mote stabilization of defense personneland, where possible, their conversion tocivilian activities. This visionary gov-ernment initiative under DoD leader-ship has made significant progress inthe destruction of delivery systems andmissile silos slated for eliminationunder the Strategic Arms ReductionTreaty, or START I. However, effortsaimed at stabilizing the people and fa-cilities of the Russian nuclear complexand safeguarding the associated nuclearmaterials initially proved to be difficult.

In the context of these highly visibleefforts, another smaller and quieter ef-fort was proceeding steadily and withremarkable success. Nuclear weaponsscientists from Los Alamos and fromArzamas-16 (the birthplace of the Sovi-et atomic bomb, now called Sarov)began working together on basic sci-ence projects almost immediately afterthe Cold War ended, and the mutualtrust and respect gained through thatlab-to-lab scientific effort has become aspringboard for a larger lab-to-lab effortin nuclear materials control throughoutthe Russian nuclear complex.

What were the seeds for this un-precedented collaboration, and how didit get official approval? How did itgrow into the larger effort in nonprolif-eration? How are these lab-to-lab ef-forts affecting the government-to-gov-ernment efforts started underNunn-Lugar, and what are the prospectsfor furthering nonproliferation goals inthe future?

We asked Laboratory Director SigHecker and other Los Alamos staff in-volved in the lab-to-lab effort to ad-dress those questions. Their experi-ences of interacting with the Russiannuclear scientists through the remark-able changes of the last decade beartestimony to the power of personal tiesand trust in the pursuit of shared inter-ests. These interactions may reflect theuniversal values of the scientific com-munity and presage the realization ofthe long-held belief that those valuesare a key to resolving the most difficultglobal problems.

The photo shows the Directors of Los

Alamos National Laboratory and

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

being greeted in February 1992 at the

airport of the once secret atomic city of

Arzamas-16 by leaders of VNIIEF, the All

Russian (formerly All Union) Research

Institute of Experimental Physics where

the first Soviet atomic bomb was built.

Front row left to right: Viktor Ivanov,

Los Alamos Director Sig Hecker, VNIIEF

Director Vladimir Belugin, Livermore Di-

rector John Nuckolls, VNIIEF

Scientific Director Yuli Khariton, and

Academician Alexander Pavlovskii.

Previous two pages: In the fore-ground, Director Sig Hecker has dis-embarked at the Arzamas-16 airportand is about to shake hands with YuliKhariton, the Soviet“Oppenheimer.”Shown in the background on the leftpage is the monastery at Arzamas-16and on the right page, Los Alamos National Laboratory .

The Scientific Roots of the Collaboration

Sig Hecker: Many people have ex-pressed surprise when I tell them of thejoint work with our Russian counter-parts from the atomic city of Arzamas-16. The fact that we are working notonly on peacetime science projects butalso on the sensitive issues of nuclearmaterials control strikes them as evenmore surprising. I always emphasizethat much of our success is due to thetrust and personal friendship that wehave been able to develop with theRussian nuclear scientists.

Here we’d like to tell the story ofhow that happened, and to my mind, itstarts about ten years ago and has twomain threads: One is the work associ-ated with the Joint Verification Experi-ments, an arms control effort that en-gaged our nuclear weapons testingexperts with their Soviet counterparts ina very close technical working relation-ship for over two years, and the other isthe very significant personal interac-tions in pure science between peoplefrom our nuclear-weapons-design labsand their counterparts in the SovietUnion. John Shaner and Max Fowlerof Los Alamos, for example, have beenfollowing developments in their fieldsin the Soviet Union for more than thirtyyears. I’ll ask John to begin describingthose early years.

John Shaner: As early as the late1950s, Soviets at the nuclear weaponsinstitutes were publishing seminal pa-pers in the open literature in my area ofexpertise, which is shock-wave andhigh-pressure physics. Through the1960s, we got to know each otherthrough publications, we referencedeach other’s work, and since we wereworking on similar problems, we had apretty good idea of the quality of workon both sides. Although personal con-tacts with people like Lev Al’tshuler

and Rurik Trunin from Arzamas-16, theRussian counterpart to Los Alamos, andEvgenii Avrorin from Chelyabinsk-70,the Russian counterpart to Livermore,

did not occur until the 1980s, whenthey finally happened, it was like meet-ing old colleagues.

Sig Hecker: A particularly importantset of meetings were those betweenMax Fowler and Academician Alexan-der Pavlovskii of Arzamas-16, one ofAndrei Sakharov’s students. Both Maxand Pavlovskii were pioneers during the1960s in the field of explosively-drivenpulsed power for the generation of ultra-

high magnetic fields. Their interactionprovided the initial basis of trust for try-ing to initiate a lab-to-lab collaboration,and their mutual interest, and that oftheir junior colleagues, led directly tothe work in pulsed power that forms thebulk of lab-to-lab scientific interactionswith the nuclear scientists of Arzamas-16. Max, when did it all start?

Max Fowler: I first heard of Alexan-der Pavlovskii in 1965 in connectionwith Megagauss-I, the first internationalconference on using high explosivesand magnetic-flux compression to cre-ate ultra-high magnetic fields. At LosAlamos, we were interested in usingthis pulsed-power source to initiate con-trolled fusion. The Soviet interest waspresumably identical. Pavlovskii wasan author on four of eight Soviet ab-stracts submitted to Megagauss-I. Wewere looking forward to meeting him,but none of those authors were permit-ted to attend the conference. Supposed-ly they were from the Kurchatov Insti-tute in Moscow, a civilian institutefocussed on nuclear reactors. But atthat time, every Soviet nuclear scientisthad to say he was from Kurchatov.Not until Megagauss-V in 1989, whenrelationships between the Soviet Unionand the United States were thawing, didwe learn that Pavlovskii and his col-leagues in pulsed power were from asecret city, now known to be Arzamas-16. Sakharov called it “the Installa-tion” in his autobiography, and ofcourse, it is the Soviet nuclear weaponsdesign center where their first atomicand hydrogen bombs were made.

John Shaner: We should remind peo-ple that Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70 were places that weren’t supposed toexist and never appeared on any Sovietmaps until after the Cold War.

Los Alamos Science: Max, when didyou first meet Pavlovskii?



Part I Roots of the Lab-to-Lab Collaboration

I always emphasize that much of our success

is due to the trust and personal friendship that

we have been able to develop with the Russian

nuclear scientists.

Sig Hecker

Max Fowler: We had hopes of meet-ing him, as well as Vladimir Cherny-shev, at the second Megagauss confer-ence in Washington, D.C., in 1979.Their papers were actually read at thatmeeting, butagain they werenot allowed to at-tend. SoPavlovskii and Ididn’t meet until1982 at a confer-ence at theLavrentyev Insti-tute of Hydrody-namics in Novosi-birsk in Siberia.And it was trulyexciting to seeeach other afterknowing for sev-enteen years thatwe were workingon very similarthings. At subse-quent confer-ences, we dis-cussed our workand began to de-velop a ratherstrong friendship.He had a tremen-dous sense ofhumor, and it wasa pleasure to ex-change ideas withhim even though,or perhaps be-cause, each of uswas trying to getinformation fromthe other.

In the mean-time, U.S. intelli-gence had beenkeeping track of the Soviet activities inthis area and knew that their effort be-came fairly large in the early 1960s. Iwould guess it was stimulated by our1960 paper in which we reported usingthese magnetic-flux-compression gener-ators to create fields in the range of 10to 15 megagauss and stated our inten-tion to apply those fields to the problem

of fusion. The Soviets put quite a bitof money into their effort, and in theearly 1980s, the Air Force was so im-pressed with the reported performanceof one of Pavlovskii’s high-energy gen-

erators that they asked us to duplicateit. That was the LIGA project. Someof the LIGA results were presented atMegagauss-III in 1983. Pavlovskiihappened to attend the talk and startedasking the speaker some very embar-rassing questions. I finally interrupted the speaker andtold Pavlovskii, “Yes, we copied your

generator to see if it worked as well as you said it did.” In fact, our copyworked better than he described in theliterature in one sense and not as wellin another. And the one I was interest-

ed in was the onethat didn’t work quiteas well.

Krik Krikorian:During the lab-to-labvisits, Pavlovskiionce brought up the fact that we hadduplicated his gener-ator, and he asked,“Why didn’t you justorder it from us?”

Max Fowler: Theyactually did offer tosell us one of theirhigh-field generatorsin June 1989 atMegagauss-V. Thatwas also whenPavlovskii sent me awritten offer of col-laboration. A fewmonths before,Pavlovskii had madehis first visit to theUnited States in con-nection with a steer-ing committee meet-ing for Megagauss-V,and with my help, hehad taken a tour ofvarious facilities fromFlorida and NewYork to the westcoast and places inbetween. Unfortu-nately, between thenand June, he had his

first heart attack and was unable to at-tend Megagauss-V. But at the confer-ence, I received a letter from him writ-ten in English in which he wrote, “Itseems that it is high time to think abouta joint program of works [sic] on bothsuperhigh magnetic fields cumulationand experiments setting in such fields.What’s your opinion?” I brought this

Dear Dr. C. M. Fowler.Owing to circumstances over which I have no control we

shouldn’t meet at the conference “Megagauss – 5”. I feel somewhatunhealthy and doctors don’t recommend me to go to Novosibirsk. I’mgetting well now.

In spite of this unforeseen situation the preparation of thebook shouldn’t be delayed.

If you’ve managed to compilate a variant of plan–prospect of afuture book, I ask you to send it with Dr. G. A. Shvetsov and toinform about the adress of correspondence.

There is one more question for discussion. During the lastyears the evolution of explosive method for superhigh fieldsobtaining by coaxial shells system magnetic flux compressionallows to obtain a field with intensity of about 16 MOe. On thisway it seems real to achieve the fields reproducibility of 20 – 30MOe during the next few years. The reports concerning theseproblems will be made at the conference. The experiment with suchfacilities will be both expensive and complicated enough. It seems that it is high time to think about a joint program of works on both superhigh magnetic fields cumulation and experiments setting in such fields. What’s your opinion?

Dear Dr. C. M. Fowler, I wish to thank you once more fororganization of such a wonderful trip across the USA, which deeply impressed me. I send you the book “The Problems of ModernExperimental and Theoretical Physics” involving the articles onmagnetic cumulation, and a small souvenir – a box with yourportrait in memory of our first meetings in Novosibirsk. The painter used a photograph of year, 1983, that is why it wasdifficult to reproduce the versatility as a feature of yourcharacter. But his main effort to depict you full of strength andenergy I share completely and wish you health and durable creativeactivities.

I hope for a successful work on the book, scientific contactsexpanding and meetings with you. I ask you to give my sincerethanks to your wife for warm reception. My wife thanks you forsouvenirs.

Sincerely yours,

A. I. Pavlovskii


4 Los Alamos Science Number 24 1996

letter back to Los Alamos, but therewas no way to respond.

At that same meeting, we found outthat he was from the secret city wherethe first Soviet atomic bomb was built,and that it was roughly a few hundredmiles from Moscow.

Krik Krikorian: Of course, our intel-ligence people knew that the name oftheir ‘Los Alamos’ was Arzamas-16,and that it had been previously calledseveral other names.

Los Alamos Science: And do we knowwhat the ‘16’ stands for?

Steve Younger: The Russians like tojoke that the ‘16’ was meant to makeus look for the other fifteen. In realityit is a postal code.

Irv Lindemuth: Another interestingevent at Megagauss-V was when BobReinovsky and I met Vladimir Cherny-shev, who is also from Arzamas-16 andalso a leader in the design of magnetic-flux compression generators. I firstheard of Chernyshev in 1988 when ourInternational Technology Divisionasked me to evaluate Russian papers onfusion. One particularly interesting

paper was written by Vladislav Mokhovand Chernyshev and outlined a novelapproach to controlled fusion involvingpulsed power and magnetic flux com-pression. My colleagues and I believedthen and still believe that the approachis very promising. We now call it mag-netized target fusion. The paper attract-ed interest in part because it had beensubmitted to the prestigious Sovietphysics journal Doklady by Yuli Khari-ton, who was the chief designer of thefirst Soviet atomic bomb.

At Megagauss-V, I tried to discussthat very interesting paper with Cherny-shev. He apparently was not allowedto talk to Americans about fusion, buthe was willing to talk about the Russianpulsed-power capability, which was ev-idently very impressive, and he evensaid, “Maybe some day we can do anexperiment in which you and your col-leagues design the load and we providethe generator.”

Los Alamos Science: It must havebeen surprising to get offers for collab-oration from scientists who were fromthe closed city of Arzamas-16. Afterall, this was 1989 and the Cold Warwas still in progress. Did either of youtake these overtures seriously?

Max Fowler: Not really. But on alater trip to the Soviet Union, welearned that they were quite serious.

Sig Hecker: Max, before we get aheadof our story, let’s find out from Johnhow the contacts in high pressure sci-ence developed during the 1980s.

John Shaner: The first time I person-ally met people from the shock wavegroups at Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70 was at an international conferenceon high pressure science in Kiev in1987. Well-known people from both oftheir institutes were anxious to meettheir U.S. counterparts to discuss asmuch as we could of the thirty years oftechnical work that we had been read-ing about in the literature. Poduretsand Trunin were there from Arzamas-

16, and Boris Vodolaga and Avrorinwere there from Chelyabinsk-70.Evgenii Avrorin, the technical directorfrom Chelyabinsk-70 even chaired asession. A Russian friend told me dur-

ing the session that six months earlierAvrorin would not have been allowedto attend a conference with foreigners,let alone chair a session. He was aleading designer of secondaries, thethermonuclear component of the hydrogen bomb.



… it was truly exciting to see each other after knowing for seventeen

years that we were workingon very similar things.

At subsequent conferences,we discussed our work and began to develop

a rather strong friendship.[Pavlovskii] had a

tremendous sense of humor,and it was a pleasure

to exchange ideas with him even though, or

perhaps because, each of us was trying to

get information from the other.

Alexander Pavlovskii

Max Fowler

The Joint Verification Experiments and Viktor

Mikhailov

Sig Hecker: These technical contactsin the late 1980s bring us to the secondmain thread of our story, which in-volves the Soviet-American Joint Verifi-cation Experiments of 1988 and the ef-fort to ratify the Threshold Test BanTreaty. In that dramatic effort, the So-viets came to theNevada Test Site andboth sides made an on-site measurement ofthe yield of a U.S. nu-clear device and com-pared the results, andthen both sides did thesame for a Soviet de-vices at their test sitein Semipalatinsk.Those joint experi-ments and the associat-ed negotiations inGeneva involved manyinteractions with theirnuclear scientists, inparticular with ViktorMikhailov. Mikhailovis now the head of MI-NATOM, the Ministryof Atomic Energy ofthe Russian Federation,and he has become theprimary governmentauthority in Russiasupporting the lab-to-lab effort.

To understand theunfolding of events,let’s remember thatthe Soviet-American interactions of the1980s were not all wine and roses.President Reagan often referred to theSoviet Union as the evil empire. In1983, our country had an enormous de-fense buildup and SDI was born. Thenuclear weapons resurgence in terms ofnew systems and money flowing backinto the program was also enormous.

Steve Younger: I remember a Liver-more nuclear shot in the mid-1980s and

on the nuclear device can was paintedin 12-inch letters “Eat neutrons Ivan.”We should also keep in mind that theSDI work we did in the mid-1980s wasdirected towards shooting down Sovietmissiles. They were the targets, and bygolly, we studied their vapor trails andall sorts of stuff.

Sig Hecker: And then came the Rea-gan-Gorbachev summit at Reykjavik in

1986. I was just flabbergasted. I couldnot believe that these two men weresaying they were going to get rid of allnuclear weapons. But they said it. Tome that was a really significantchange—not completely convincing,but still significant.

I became Director of the Laboratoryon January 15, 1986, and at that time,one of the key issues was the ratifica-tion of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty.The treaty set a 150-kiloton limit on the

yield of underground nuclear tests. TheAmericans had been observing thetreaty for ten years since the signing byNixon and Brezhnev, and the Sovietsclaimed they were too. But the meansto verify the treaty were not specified,and there were many claims of cheatingby both sides. About 160 such claimswere on file in Geneva, so the status ofthe treaty was fairly shaky. Neverthe-less, Reagan wanted the treaty ratified

by the Senate before heleft office in 1988. TheJoint Verification Experi-ments were intended todemonstrate that themethods agreed to byeach side to verify treatycompliance could be field-ed effectively and withoutundue interference withnuclear experiments. Theactivities associated withthose experiments werethe principal Soviet inter-face that we thought aboutand talked about at thattime. I’ll let Don Eilerstell you about that.

Don Eilers: PresidentReagan really wanted bet-ter verification of theyields of the Soviet tests,and he would often repeatthe phrase “trust but veri-fy” in both Russian andEnglish. He was beingpushed by the hardlinersin the Defense Depart-ment who were concernedthat the Soviets were test-

ing more powerful devices than thetreaty allowed. In 1984 Reagan made aspeech at the United Nations in whichhe proposed that the CORRTEX tech-nology be used to verify the Sovietyields. That was a startling proposalbecause CORRTEX requires perform-ing the nuclear yield measurement atthe site where the nuclear device isbeing tested. In the past, we had deter-mined the yields of Soviet nuclear testsby seismic methods at distances thou-



Viktor Ivanov and Vern Wetherill (DOE/Nevada) standing in front of a ten-

foot-diameter drill bit at the Nevada Test Site in January 1988 during the

initial exchange visit to prepare for the Joint Verification Experiments.

sands of kilometers from the actual test site, and the Soviets presumablydid the same for us. But CORRTEXis a hydrodynamic measurement inwhich the cables must go down into asatellite hole near the nuclear device,and then when the device goes off, the speed of the shock wave along the cable gives you a very accurate estimate of the yield, or explosivepower, of the device.

Los Alamos Science:Was the CORRTEX tech-nology new in 1984?

Don Eilers: No. DonWestervelt and I hadstarted working on itback in 1975, right afterNixon and Brezhnevsigned the Threshold TestBan Treaty and duringthe negotiations on thecompanion Peaceful Nu-clear Explosion Treaty,which was signed byFord and Brezhnev in1976. We actually field-ed the first CORRTEXsystem in 1976 on one ofthe U.S. high-yield nu-clear tests. Our Sovietcounterparts in the 1970swere Vadim Simonenko,Nikolai Voloshin, and allthose guys at Chelyabin-sk-70 whom we were tomeet again in 1986 at the Nuclear Test-ing Talks in Geneva leading up to theJoint Verification Experiments.

Those talks were a direct result ofthe Reagan Initiative and were designedto discuss methodologies for verifyingthe Threshold Test Ban Treaty. TheU.S. delegation was led by AmbassadorBob Barker from DOD, and Bob Jef-fries and I were part of that delegation.The Soviets were proposing seismicmethods to measure the yield, and theUnited States was proposing COR-RTEX measurements. In the course ofa year and a half, we went through sev-eral two-week sessions in which all we

did was basically look at one anotheracross the table. Nothing happeneduntil Secretary of State George Schultzand Soviet Foreign Minister E. A. She-vardnadze got together in September1987 and proposed full-scale negotia-tions with the objective of ultimatelydoing joint verification experiments, orJVEs, in which the two sides wouldmade simultaneous hydrodynamic(CORRTEX-like) measurements of nu-

clear yield and compare results. ByNovember, there was an agreement tohave preliminary exchange visits to ourrespective nuclear test sites, and in De-cember 1987, Schultz and Shevard-nadze signed an agreement on the con-duct and objectives of the JVEs.

Now there is some confusion overwho proposed those experiments. TheRussians think they did and Bob Barkerthinks that it was done over a cup oftea in Washington. Voloshin asserts inan unpublished manuscript that, “It wasa proposal from the Soviets made dur-ing the April 1987 ministerial.”

In any case, the preliminary visits

were set up for January 1988. The ob-ject of these visits was to familiarizeone another enough so that we couldmore easily negotiate an agreement forcarrying out the JVEs. They were real-ly kind of exciting times. A delegationof twenty of us led by Bob Barker wentfirst to Moscow, where we had a nightat the Bolshoi Ballet, and went on tothe Soviet nuclear test site at Semi-palatinsk in Kazakhstan.

Sig Hecker: Weshould point out thatyou were the firstAmericans ever to setfoot on a Soviet testsite, and that was con-sidered a pretty big dealby the hardliners inWashington.

Don Eilers: Right.The Russians flew onthe same airplane withus, and we landed in arip-roaring snowstorm atSemipalatinsk. Thatevening at dinner, wemet Viktor Mikhailovfor the first time. Hewas then the Director ofthe Scientific ResearchInstitute of Impulse En-gineering in Moscow,the institute responsiblefor many types of nu-clear testing diagnostics.

He certainly appeared to be leadingtheir technical group, and I thought,“Boy, what an intense guy.” He exud-ed self-confidence and pride. It wasquite obvious that he was well respect-ed, and everybody and his brother lis-tened to him. He even gave some ofthe technical presentations on their tim-ing and firing system during our stay atthe test site. Voloshin and Simonenkowere also there.

The atmosphere of the visit waseerie. Armed guards surrounded ourhotel, and we were permitted to walkonly about a few hundred feet down toand along the bank of the Irtysh River.



Left to right: V. Mikhailov, V. Ivanov, R. Trunin, and N. Voloshin standing

inside the surface-casing for the ten-foot drill bit at the Nevada Test Site

during the preliminary visit. The Soviets were very impressed because

they were limited to drilling three-foot diameter holes at their test site.

continued on page 10


•

1965 Megagauss-I, the first international conference on ultra-high magnetic fields, reveals first glimpse of Soviet pulsed-power program to Western scientists. Pavlovskii and other Soviet scientists from the secret nuclear-weapons-design city ofArzamas-16 submit abstracts but are not allowed to attend.

• 1975 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT), signed by Presidents Ford and Brezhnev, limits yields of underground nucleartests to 150 kilotons.

• 1982-1989 Fowler of Los Alamos and Pavlovskii develop connection at Megagauss and other conferences.

• 1982-1984 Reagan begins initiative to improve TTBT verification and the prospects for ratification. Reagan suggestsCORRTEX methodology, which requires on-site verification of nuclear yields.

• 1986 Gorbachev starts policy of glasnost. Gorbachev and Reagan hold Reykjavik Summit.

• 1986-1988 Negotiations on the verification of TTBT in Geneva. Soviet nuclear-weapons scientists, led by Mikhailov,work with their U.S. counterparts to develop verification technologies and procedures.

• 1988 Joint Verification Experiments (JVE)—Soviet and U.S. teams develop consistent methodology and then performjoint on-site yield measurements at each other’s nuclear weapons test sites. Soviet scientists discuss possibility of collabora-tion and present possible list of topics.

• 1988-1990 Continuing Soviet-American negotiations on procedures for implementing the TTBT.

• 1989 First written offer of collaboration—Pavlovskii sends offer to Fowler.

• Fall 1990 Opening of the Soviet Nuclear Design Institutes to American Scientists. In August, Avrorin, chief scientist ofChelyabinsk-70 invites Shaner and Livermore scientists to visit the nuclear weapons design city of Chelyabinsk-70. Avrorinproposes thirteen areas of collaboration. In October, Mikhailov takes Eilers and U.S. delegation to visit Arzamas-16.

• September 1990 TTBT ratified under the Bush administration.

• 1991 Los Alamos Director Hecker speaks with Alessi, head of the Arms Control and Nonproliferation office of the DOE,concerning the possibility of collaborations with the Soviet nuclear institutes.

• August 1991 Unsuccessful coup is staged against the Gorbachev government.

• September 1991 Chernyshev and Mokhov present Lindemuth with a written proposal signed by the Director of Arzamas-16 for joint Russian-American work on magnetized target fusion.

• November 1991 Passage of the Nunn-Lugar legislation earmarking 400 million dollars of the DoD budget to help trans-port and store Soviet nuclear warheads and establish safeguards against proliferation.

• November-December 1991 At the invitation of Pavlovskii and Avrorin, Dan Stillman and Krik Krikorian are the firstAmerican scientists from the U.S. nuclear weapons establishment to visit both Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70. Stillman de-livers to Hecker a list of possible areas of collaboration generated by Khariton and Avrorin.

• December 1991 The Soviet Union collapses and Independent States break from Russia. Hecker proposes to DOE Sec-retary Admiral Watkins that lab-to-lab scientific collaborations with Russian nuclear weapons institutes might address Presi-dent Bush’s concern of a potential “brain drain” of Russian nuclear scientists.

Chronology of the


• February 1992 Directors’ Exchange visits—Directors Belugin and Nechai visit Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore Na-tional Laboratories. Later in the month Directors Hecker and Nuckolls visit Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70 and discusspossibility of lab-to-lab collaborations.

• May 1992 ISTC program is launched under Nunn-Lugar. International Science and Technology Centers are mandatedto help redirect weapons of mass destruction expertise to civilian and peacetime activities.

• October 1992 First lab-to-lab contracts signed between Los Alamos and Arzamas-16. Two experimental series areplanned.

• August 1992-December 1993 Large-scale, nuclear material storage facility is planned under Nunn-Lugar. Augustsonand Mullen from Los Alamos and Il’kaev, Yuferev, and Zykov from Arzamas-16 work together to plan modern MPC&A (ma-terials protection, control, and accounting) system for storage facility.

• February 1993 Pavlovskii dies.

• August 1993 “You are driving us into the hands of the Chinese.” Younger receives Russian complaints that no Ameri-can money has been forthcoming. Younger informs Domenici of the situation. Domenici speaks on the floor of the Senateabout the dangers of not supporting the Russians.

• September 1993 IPP program launched. Congress allocates 35 million dollars of foreign appropriations money for anindustrial partnership program with Russian scientists to help scientific conversion.

• September 1993 First Russian-American lab-to-lab experiment performed at Arzamas-16. Russians and Americans“working side-by-side as equals.”

• October 1993 Second series of lab-to-lab experiments performed at Los Alamos. Measurement of critical magnetic fieldof high Tc superconductor. First Russian scientists allowed behind the fence.

• December 1993 Efforts on Russian storage facility are suspended.

• January 1994 Lab-to-lab umbrella contracts on scientific conversion activities signed by Hecker and Belugin. Proposalto include MPC&A activities under the umbrella contract is presented.

• March 1994 Curtis of DOE approves Hecker’s proposal for a lab-to-lab materials control program.

• June 1994 Hecker and Belugin sign contract to begin lab-to-lab MPC&A program.

• 1994-1995 Scientists from Los Alamos and Arzamas-16 perform six more series of experiments under umbrella contract.

• 1994-Present Lab-to-lab MPC&A program grows from 2 to 45 million dollars. Government-to-government program inMPC&A moves to DOE. Participation in lab-to-lab increases from one Russian institute to eight. Similar growth occurs inthe government-to-government program.

• April 1996 Start of Dirac series. Experiments extend Russian-American lab-to-lab work in ultra-high fields to a largerinternational community.

■

Lab-to-Lab Program

The first night we had a problem withthe guards because we wanted andneeded exercise and were quite irritatedthat the guards had set the boundaryabout fifty yards short of the agreedwalking distance. Fortunately, the issuewas quickly resolved by AmbassadorBarker and General Ilyenko, Comman-der of the test site. The nights werecold, about thirty degrees below zero,and the days were filled with trips tothe test site, for example, to the forwardcamp where we and our equipmentwould be housed during the JVEs, andto a site where they were drilling a holefor a nuclear test and where we werebriefed on their drilling and logging op-erations. It was out there in the middleof nowhere, on a very cold day with thewind howling at fifty miles per hourwhen they brought us into a double-walled tent and hosted a great feast forus. We were very impressed.

Later that month, they came out tothe Nevada Test Site, and we recipro-cated with presentations on equipment,

operating procedures for conductingtests, a visit to the forward area and toa drilling site, and so on.

I want to emphasize that Mikhailovwas certainly somebody to be reckonedwith. After going through manymonths of work on the JVEs, and thenworking daily together at our test site, afriendship developed. One nightMikhailov was talking to me aboutwhat he used to do and said that,among other things, he sat on a com-mittee for targeting U.S. cities. Thenhe said, “Don, it makes a big differencenow that I can place faces at those tar-gets.” He meant the job would bemuch more difficult.

Max Fowler: Did he speak English?

Don Eilers: Very little, but he under-stands a lot of English.

Sig Hecker: John, you played an im-portant role in the JVEs, too. Tell usabout that.

John Shaner: In January 1988, afterthe formal negotiations with the Sovietshad started, Bob Jeffries came backfrom Geneva wanting to add a technicalexpert in experimental shock wavephysics, and he asked me to join thetechnical experts group. My role wasto provide technical support during themeetings and negotiations as well as toadvise on the requirements on rocksamples and experimental procedureswe would need as part of the hydrody-namic yield measurements.

Don Eilers: We were going to use ahydrodynamic yield determinationmethodology that we had been workingwith since 1962 and that could be car-ried out by both sides and comparedopenly. One essential procedure in-volved measuring the shock propertiesof the rocks taken from the point of ex-plosion, then using that data to con-struct a theoretical model of the rock,and using the model in a hydrodynamiccalculation of the shock wave generatedby the explosion. That methodologywas incorporated in the JVE Accord,which was signed by Gorbachev andReagan in Moscow in May 1988.

John Shaner: I remember many dis-cussions with Vadim Simonenko, fromChelyabinsk-70, concerning the mea-surements, procedures, and theoreticalmodels. There was some apprehensionthat our measurements and modelsmight be different enough that wemight not agree on the final outcome.In July, at the Nevada Test Site, wecompared the first experimental resultson shock propagation in the rocks, andthey agreed so well that we were bothrelieved.

Don Eilers: And then everyone’s con-cerns turned to smiles several weekslater when we exchanged the COR-RTEX and the Soviet data from the firstJVE explosion “Kearsarge.” Theagreement was good, resulting in yieldswith acceptable uncertainty. The entireprocess was repeated for “Shagan,” theJVE performed at Semipalatinsk, and it



The Soviets and Americans are installing CORRTEX cables in a satellite hole at the

Nevada Test Site in July 1988 in preparation for the U.S. JVE “Kearsarge.” T. McKown

(second from left), V. Salnikov (third from left), N. Voloshin (third from right), and W.

Storey (second from right) led the work on this shot.

continued from page 7

gave similar agreement between thetwo sides. Those successes demonstrat-ed the viability of hydrodynamic-yieldmeasurement technology and methodol-ogy for improved verification of theThreshold Test Ban Treaty.

Los Alamos Science: Sig, what wasyour experience with the JVEs?

Sig Hecker: For me, a key event wasgoing out to the actual experiments atNevada. Mikhailov was leading theSoviet group, and as Don pointed out,he appeared to be a proud and even ar-rogant scientist type. It was interestingto watch him and the other Russiansoperate, to see the sense of technicalcompetence and the pride in their work.I remember visiting Mikhailov in theSoviet instrument trailer, and he wasvery anxious to show me this oscillo-scope that he had developed in his in-stitute in Moscow.

Don Eilers: Mikhailov had shippedtwo SRG-7’s—7 gigaherz oscillo-scopes—to our test site. They had abandwidth beyond the range allowedfor use by the JVE Accord becausethey were capable of recording classi-fied device performance information.We had nothing similar in capability onthe American side. Mikhailov hadthem sent just to shake up everybodyand to demonstrate that the Soviets hadgood technology.

Sig Hecker: He certainly was veryproud of that equipment. But the con-versation that I remember most was inthe mess hall with Simonenko. He wassitting there trying to sell me on theidea that we should really be doingjoint underground scientific experi-ments—JSEs instead of JVEs. And sowe talked a bit about the type of sci-ence that you could do underground.All unclassified, of course.

Don Eilers: Simonenko often talkedabout doing underground equation-of-state experiments and other high-pres-sure physics. In fact, when we went

back to Geneva following the JVEs, Si-monenko, Avrorin, and Voloshin spentthe better part of an afternoon in theSoviet Mission discussing this withJohn Shaner, Don Westervelt, and my-self and presenting us with diagrams ofproposed experiments.

Sig Hecker: One striking thing aboutthe JVEs was the enormous pressure tomake sure that everything worked.Clearly it would have been an interna-tional embarrassment, for instance, ifour device hadn’t gone off at all, or ifthe yield were way over the allowedlimit, or if the CORRTEX system had-n’t worked. I had my fingers crossed.

Don Eilers: Well, we were sure theCORRTEX system would work becauseof the redundancy and safeguards in thesystem, but we still worried that theyields be well below the threshold sothere would be no complaints about vi-olating the treaty.

We completed the JVEs—both theU.S. shot Kearsarge and the Russianshot Shagan—by September 1988, butthe negotiations went on, and thetreaties were not complete until May1990. Many of the issues remainingafter the initial demonstration related tothe implementation of the treaty andwere technical in nature. For example,Don Westervelt, Keith Alrick, LarryPirkl and I from Los Alamos, DavidConrad from Livermore, Horace Poteetfrom Sandia, Charles McWilliam fromDOE/Nevada, and Bill Summa from theDefense Nuclear Agency worked withthe Russians on designing devices toprevent classified information frombeing picked up by the Soviet and U.S.sensing cables. This technical effortwas very successful, and we were ableto put together a treaty that was notonly ratified in 1990 but also imple-mented on three U.S. tests. In particu-lar, Soviet hydrodynamic yield verifica-tion measurements were done on the



The U.S. team celebrates after the Soviet JVE “Shagan” at the Semipalatinsk test site

in Kazakhstan in September 1988 with a picnic and swimming at Crater Lake. Al-

though created by a peaceful nuclear explosion in 1968, the lake was no longer ra-

dioactive and quite safe for swimming. Left to right: A. Popov, G. Fauerbach, K. Al-

rick, R. Hill, D. Eilers, L. Pirkl, C. McWilliam, W. Storey, and H. Poteet.

Junction test in 1992, one ofthe last underground tests wedid.

Joe Pilat: Don, I think it isimportant to note that therewere some very difficult politi-cal as well as implementationissues that had to be addressedby the Soviet and Americandelegations. For example, therequirement of notificationwell in advance of a nucleartest and the presence of foreignpersonnel at the site of a testwere real stumbling blocks.But the technical problemswere always addressed in aprofessional, collegial fashionamong experts who recognizedthe common backgrounds theyshared.

Don Eilers: Very definitely.Over a period of two years,the Russian and American sci-entists had been through a peri-od of initial posturing, particu-larly by the Russians, that neither sideliked, but had then gone on to developa great deal of mutual respect and prideabout the actual technical accomplish-ments. We also developed the level oftrust and cooperation that was neededfor successful implementation of thetreaty.

Steve Younger: Mikhailov has a tro-phy table in his office and the biggestthing on it is the JVE plaque. He’svery proud of that.

Don Eilers: One thing to remember is that Mikhailov always headed theirtechnical group, both at the JVEs and at the negotiations in Geneva. Evenafter he became Deputy Minister ofMINATOM, Mikhailov took time outto spend three days with us in Moscowin October 1990 negotiating all thetechnical nitty-gritty details of the anti-intrusiveness devices. He satthere, and he was on top of the issues

all the time.

Steve Younger: And he still is. I hadlunch at the U.S. Embassy in Moscowin October 1994, and he came up to meand wanted to talk about the calibrationof neutron detectors in the recent lab-to-lab experiments on fusion. He cantalk about our joint experiments as anexpert in the field.

Opening Up the Russian Nuclear Institutes—August

1990 to December 1991

Los Alamos Science: In 1990, severalof you were invited to visit the Sovietnuclear weapons labs. Was this in thecontext of the negotiations for theThreshold Test Ban Treaty?

John Shaner: The invitations certainlygrew out of those contacts. For exam-ple, while negotiating the procedures ofthe JVEs, Simonenko and I had occa-sion to discuss basic high-pressure sci-ence, which is the subject of an All-

Union Conference held everyyear or so by the Russians.Attendance at those confer-ences had been restricted toSoviets, and the frankness ofthe discussions was leg-endary. By the late 1980sthe Soviet scientists thoughtit would be useful to involveAmericans, just as we hadinvolved Russians in ourAmerican Physical Societyconferences. As a result ofthose discussions, severalscientists from the UnitedStates were invited to anAll-Union meeting on high-pressure equation-of-state is-sues to take place near Irkut-sk in August 1990. Abouttwo weeks before our sched-uled departure, EvgeniiAvrorin, whom we had got-ten to know well in Geneva,arranged for a few of us tostop at Chelyabinsk-70 for atwo-day visit on the way toIrkutsk. All of us involved,

including Avrorin, understood that wedid not have enough time to get all ofthe correct approvals, but we couldprobably get the most important ones—and we did. With less than a week tospare, three people from Livermore andI were able to get permission fromWashington to make the visit.

We spent the first day of our visit atthe original 1955 site of Chelyabinsk-70. There we discussed a wide rangeof scientific topics including high-pres-sure science and hydrodynamic instabil-ities. On the second day, we droveabout 15 miles to the north to the pre-sent site, where we saw facilities forstudying hydrodynamic instabilities,large pulsed reactors and electron-beammachines, and an explosive test site.

On that second day we were present-ed with a list of 13 potential topics forcollaboration in areas of nuclear scienceand hydrodynamics. That list was verysimilar to one we had received in Gene-va more than a year previously. Thencame the surprise. Chuck MacDonald



Don Eilers (left) and Viktor Mikhailov in Geneva in December

1989 for a TTBT meeting to discuss anti-intrusiveness devices

and equipment exchanges. Less than a year later, Mikhailov

invited the U.S. delegation to Arzamas-16.

from Livermore and I were asked toparticipate in a video-taped interviewwith Avrorin to discuss our reactions tothis historic visit. Chuck and I werepretty concerned about this as neitherof us were very experienced in thiskind of sensitive public discussion. Inever did find out how Avrorin usedthis tape.

Los Alamos Science: Don, didn’t youget to visit Arzamas-16 at about thesame time?

Don Eilers: Yes. While in Moscow atthe October 1990 negotiations on anti-intrusiveness devices, Mikhailov sur-prised us and seized the initiative byinviting the U.S. delegation, includingmyself, Keith Alrick, Don Westervelt,and Larry Pirkl, to visit their secret nu-

clear weapon design city Arzamas-16.Such an invitation to Arzamas-16 hadnever been made before, and of course,it was not clear to the delegation mem-bers that the United States would givepermission.

The approval took some time incoming, but when it finally did, theyflew us to Arzamas-16 for a most extra-ordinary day. We were greeted by awhole crowd including Khariton, Belu-gin, Trutnev, Pavlovskii, and others.They showed us an accelerator, a high-powered laser system, and a few thingslike that, and then we had a wonderfulpicnic with a big bonfire, snow flurriesfalling, and lots of good food andvodka.

At one point, Mikhailov told Wester-velt, “You are looking at the mostpeace-loving men in the world. They

have been working here for forty years,and the only reason they were workingon nuclear weapons was to make damnsure we never had a war.” Similarly,when we first arrived at Arzamas,Khariton gave us a little speech in theHouse of Scientists, and one of the firstthings he said was, “I’ve been waitingforty years for this.”

While we were in Arzamas-16,Chernyshev gave me a letter to bringback to the Laboratory. It was ad-dressed to Denny Erickson and in it hementioned Max Fowler’s recent visit toSiberia and the discussions on pulsedpower, and then he wrote, “I would liketo raise a question on collaboration inthis field.”

Los Alamos Science: Max, what hap-pened on that trip?



The U.S. delegation at a picnic at Arzamas-16 in October 1990. The trip, the first visit by Americans to Arzamas-16, was arranged by

V. Mikhailov (standing at far end of table). Seated left to right facing camera: V. Belugin, G. Tsyrkov, U.S. Embassy interpreter,

D. Eilers, D. Westervelt, and B. Summa.

Max Fowler: As I alluded to earlier,during my trip to Novosibirsk in Sep-tember 1990, Pavlovskii told me that hecould get my Laboratory Director andpossibly me into his “Explosives FiringArea.” In hindsight I would guess thiswas the first indication that Arzamas-16might be opened up to American nu-clear scientists. Pavlovskii and I ex-changed telegrams back and forth aboutthis visit and in November he indicatedthat we could bring even more people.My return message suggested thenames of John Birely and John Browneas two high-level Los Alamos peoplewho might have special interest in sucha visit. At that time, I also spoke withDon Westervelt about his trip to Arza-mas-16, and we decided to alert Sigthat he might receive two independentinvitations to Arzamas-16.

Los Alamos Science: What was theofficial U.S. reaction to these unofficialvisits and offers of collaboration fromthese formerly secret cities?

John Shaner: Well, the National Se-curity Council stepped in and demand-ed that Admiral Watkins, then Secre-tary of Energy, develop a plan forfuture visits. Watkins, in turn, called inthe DOE Lab Directors and demandeda plan for future interactions. I drewone up for Sig, dated December 10,1990, that outlined a step-by-stepprocess for starting collaborative ef-forts. The process would begin with anexchange of lab directors, followed bya meeting to establish topics and proce-dures, then bilateral technical discus-sions to establish details of the collabo-rations, and finally the initiation ofactive collaborations. Sig really likedthe proposal and sent it to the NationalSecurity Council, but they were preoc-cupied at that time with the Gulf War,so we heard nothing from Washingtonfor about nine months.

Irv Lindemuth: But we did respondto the pulsed-power group at Arzamas-16. First of all, Don Eilers brought

back from his visit to Arzamas-16 aprospectus in Russian describing whatwas going on at their laboratory (calledVNIIEF). And a few innocent state-ments in that brochure provided clearconfirmation that they were, indeed,working on the magnetized target ap-proach to controlled fusion that we hadfound so interesting. We then wrote aletter to Chernyshev, and in addition toasking about a paper of his, we alsoasked if a collaboration was really pos-sible. The letter went unanswered, butthen Bob Reinovsky and I and severalothers from Phillips Laboratory andLivermore had extensive discussionswith Chernyshev and Pavlovskii at theIEEE Pulsed Power Conference in SanDiego in June 1991. AcademicianMesyats, a Vice President of the SovietAcademy of Sciences, was leading thedelegation, and the Soviets were openlycourting collaborative work in pulsedpower. The discussions were primarilybetween Los Alamos and Phillips Labo-ratory and the Arzamas-16 people. The



An outdoor feast at Arzamas-16 in October 1990 during the one-day visit by the American delegation.

Russians seemed very confident that, ifthe United States was interested in col-laboration, then such a collaborationwas possible. They even indicated thatif we expressed interest, Gorbachevwould bring it up with Bush at theirJuly summit meeting. That did nothappen, but Pavlovskii and Chernyshevvisited Phillips Laboratory and LosAlamos after the San Diego conferenceand continued discussions about collab-oration. One of the outcomes was therecognition of a common interest andan invitation for us to come visit Arzamas-16.

Los Alamos Science: Did that visittake place before the collapse of theSoviet Union?

Irv Lindemuth: No, I don’t think theywere quite ready. However, I was in-vited by the Soviet Academy of Sci-ences to teach at the InternationalSchool on Plasma Physics and Con-trolled Fusion in September of 1991 ina resort town on the Black Sea, and Iwas hoping to visit Arzamas-16 in con-nection with that trip. You rememberthere was a lot of unrest in the SovietUnion at that time. The coup attempthad been made in August 1991 andmany trips to the Soviet Union werebeing cancelled. But my wife and I de-cided to go anyway. We spent theweek and a half at the conference andwhen we returned to Moscow, we weretaken to an apartment in Kurchatov In-stitute. About three hours later, some-one came and knocked and said,“Chernyshev and Mokhov and some oftheir people are here to meet with you.”Chernyshev and Mokhov were veryapologetic that it wasn’t possible totake us to Arzamas-16, but they thenpresented a written proposal signed byBelugin, the Director of Arzamas-16, aswell as them selves for joint U.S. workon the magnetized target approach tocontrolled fusion (they call it MAGO).After I read the proposal, my first state-ment to them was, “Wow, I don’t knowif our government is ready for this. AllI can do is take it back and see what

happens.” On the front page of theproposal were blanks for Sig Heckerand others at Los Alamos to sign.

Sig Hecker: That brings us to the So-viet collapse in December and thebreakthrough on our side. But I thinkthe events from August 1990 to De-cember 1991 are quite important. Forthe most part, it was one of fits andstarts and not getting very far. I feltthe pressure from you folks comingback from Russia, and from John Shan-er in particular, that we have an oppor-tunity to go over there and learn some-thing about the Soviets and theirprograms. And so I tried to work withthe Washington folks at DOE, princi-pally Vic Alessi who was heading upthe Office of Nonproliferation andArms Control. Vic was really one ofthe avant garde DOE people, but evenhe didn’t really pick up on this opportu-nity until later.

Reaching Out

Los Alamos Science: What do you be-lieve was the origin of the opening upof the Russian nuclear institutes andthe offers of collaboration, and was thisa more general phenomenon?

Krik Krikorian: In Colin Powell’s re-cent autobiography, he describes a con-versation he had in Moscow in 1987with Anatoly Dobrynin, Soviet Ambas-sador to the United States during duringmuch of the Cold War. Dobrynin said,in effect, we finally have a lawyer run-ning this country, and this lawyer issaying to the military, “Why do you tellme we have to have this weapon or thatweapon? I don’t intend to conquer theAmericans.” I think the winds ofchange started with the book Gor-bachev wrote on perestroika in 1987.The idea that the door was opening fil-tered out to the people in Russia andwe saw the effects at Los Alamos. Forinstance, in 1988 AcademicianVladimir Fortov, who was on the Cher-nobyl safety committee, visited Los

Alamos. He approached Sig about in-formation on reactor safety, and thenext day, there was a stack of paper afoot high to take back to Moscow. The Lab has always been open to de-veloping contacts and exchanges withthe Russians in unclassified areas of research.

The Soviets were also working col-laboratively with us on issues of non-proliferation of nuclear weaponsthrough IAEA safeguards and the Non-proliferation Treaty. Los Alamos hashad a long history of sending Laborato-ry staff to the IAEA—the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency—in Vienna.And there, you would meet a certainside of the Russian technical communi-ty—they were nuclear people, but defi-nitely not nuclear weapons types. TheSoviets set up a support program to theIAEA similar to the U.S. program, andas part of the exchanges that tookplace, Americans got to visit various fa-cilities associated with their nuclearfuel cycle, nuclear reactors, and such.

Ron Augustson: I was there in 1988with the IAEA to help the Soviets teacha course on safeguards in Dimitrograd.And we got very, very, royal treatment.At one point, I was left in Moscow fora couple of days, and to my surprise, Iwas completely free to wander all overMoscow on my own. The next year,two of my Soviet hosts from Dimitro-grad came to Los Alamos and we didsome measurements on spent fuel at theOmega West Reactor. Now the gov-ernment-to-government MPC&A pro-gram will be working with Dimitrogradto set up collaborations on improvingsafeguards of their nuclear material.

Hugh Casey: Tech transfer was anoth-er area that started to open up duringglasnost and perestroika. In 1988, theSoviets started a series of conferencesthat they advertised as attempts to bringtheir defense technology to the west.In fact Krik, myself, and Tony Rollettattended what they called a MATecconference—Materials and Manufactur-ing Conference—in Helsinki, Finland.



Representatives from key Soviet de-fense institutes and the Academy ofSciences were there, although nonefrom the nuclear weapons centers. Iwas astonished by one presentation inwhich they were trying to market thevery specialized technologies that hadbeen used for building ICF capsules. Icouldn’t imagine who they thought thebuyers would be.

Krik Krikorian: At that time it wasclear that the Russians had no conceptof marketing. They thought if you hada good product, people would just jumpon the bandwagon and buy it. Wellthat wasn’t the case at all.

Hugh Casey: There were only a hand-ful of Americans at the Helsinki confer-ence, a few western Europeans and afew Japanese. Most attendees werefrom eastern Europe. Our presencedrew a lot of attention, and they seemedto know an awful lot about us. Proba-bly they had done some backgroundchecks. But the interactions were quitedemonstrative and very friendly. Mostimportant, we were able to identifysome interesting equipment and technol-ogy that subsequently became one ofthe models for the current lab-to-lab In-dustrial Partnership Program.

Los Alamos Science: What area ofRussian technology was so intriguing?

Hugh Casey: We were particularly in-trigued with high-powered gyrotronsthat produce ultrahigh-frequency colli-mated microwave beams. We were in-terested in some applications involvingthe sintering of ceramics and had a pro-posal in to DOE to build our ownequipment, but it would have been verycostly. After the collapse of the SovietUnion, we were able to acquire thoseoriginal pieces of equipment, and theyare now installed in an industrial userfacility operated by the Laboratory’saccelerator division. We actually endedup getting the equipment free of chargethrough an industrial partner that be-came involved with Los Alamos

through the technology transfer initia-tive of the early 1990s. It is now anon-going project that has been runningfor many years and will be one of thelarger success stories in terms of trans-fer of high technology to U.S. industry.Ford Motor Company, for example, isthe first major corporation to actuallyhave put these to use into production-scale processing.

Los Alamos Science: Was there somesort asymmetry during the late 1980s?Were the Russians reaching out whilewe Americans were holding back?

Sig Hecker: You are asking whetherthe Russian nuclear scientists were real-ly more aggressive in trying to buildbridges with us, and I think the answeris yes. We were also enormously inter-ested and curious because we knew solittle about their weapons program.There was an enormous asymmetry in

the knowledge of our programs and ourscience because we do almost every-thing in the open, and so little of theirwork made it into the literature. But ittook a long time for us to get over theintelligence mode and into the outreachmode. We suspected them of being in-terested purely for the intelligence rea-son. And yet, I think they were inter-ested in the partnering outreach modeprobably much earlier than we were.

Don Eilers: I believe our 1990 visit toArzamas-16 is an example. WhenMikhailov invited us, he explained howdifficult it had been for him to arrangethe visit. It involved two discussionswith Gorbachev’s deputy and manyothers. Then, to help the U.S. delega-tion win consent for the visit, he as-sured us that there were no conditionsattached to the visit—in other words,reciprocity by the United States was notan issue. But we knew from the dis-cussions at the Nevada Test Site and inGeneva during the previous two yearsthat the possibility of collaboration wasof great interest to the Russians.

Krik Krikorian: In the same vein,Khariton and Pavlovskii took the initia-tive to give us a list of topics for possi-ble collaboration when Dan Stillmanand I visited Arzamas in December1991. Dan delivered that list to Sig.

Sig Hecker: In terms of motivations,Don Westervelt and others suggested intheir trip reports that the Russian nu-clear scientists believed working withLos Alamos would give them credibili-ty within their own country and wouldhelp them get funding from their gov-ernment. That was a key driving force.The Russian scientists were also con-cerned with how to keep their peopleinterested in their programs. Every-thing was heading downhill so fast forthem, and working with the Americansoffered a ray of hope. That was evi-dent in 1990. But I didn’t experience it directly until February 1992 when I went to Russia for the Directors’ exchanges.



Tech transfer was anotherarea that started to open upduring glasnost and pere-

stroika. In 1988, the Russians started

a series of conferences thatthey advertised as attempts

to bring their defense technology to the west.

Hugh Casey

Paul White: It’s interesting that thetechnical interactions in Geneva duringthe Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotia-tions were, in many ways, the very firstcontacts that the Russian nuclear scien-tists from the weapons institutes hadwith the international scientific commu-nity. And it was very important forthem to try to establish their reputationsas bona fide scientists in that communi-ty. So, after some initial posturing,they were very forthcoming.

Steve Younger: There was a culturalelement too. For a thousand years inRussia, interaction with the West inareas of science, literature, and so onhas been considered a social distinction.

Hugh Casey: Economic pressures inthe form of food and medical shortagesand missed paychecks were being feltin Russia for years before the Soviet

collapse. Research and developmentfunds for defense work were drying up,and so financial woes also providedsome motivation to look to the West fornew opportunities.

Krik Krikorian: There is another fac-tor that needs to be brought out. Irvwas exposed to it, and so were DannyStillman and I. The fact is they had al-ready started defense conversion. Theyeven gave us a videotape describing it.

Don Eilers: Conversion was the maintopic of the briefing we received on our1990 visit to Arzamas-16, and it wasalso the main topic of the prospectusthat Irv mentioned earlier. In fact, theytold us during the visit that they had al-ready converted about 15 per cent oftheir activities to non-defense work.

Joe Pilat: With regard to what Don,Krik, and Hugh have said, I think itwould be a mistake to attribute to Sovi-et scientists a free reign during this pe-riod. Prior to the Soviet collapse, I be-lieve they were still operating largelywithin, or in some cases, at the marginsof a fairly limited and circumscribedgovernmental agenda.

Certainly, the interactions that Max,John, and Irv described, and the onesthat Steve Younger and Ron Augustsonwill describe later, are an object of totalfascination. Ten years ago, one could-n’t have imagined the breakthroughs wehave witnessed in recent times. Butone of the biggest problems in dealingwith historical reflection is reading thefuture back into the past. Many of theissues that are really germane to thisdiscussion are questions that don’t haveconsensus answers. When did the ColdWar end? When did the roles of thenuclear weapons in the United Statesand the Soviet Union (and then Russia)begin to change to reflect changes inthe world? When was this reflected inpolicies and postures in governmentsand then the laboratories? I think weneed to look at the laboratory interac-tions in that broader context.

For the moment, I will just offer my

concept of when things changed.Looking back at the Gorbachev era,there is a tendency to see in its earlyyears and throughout its existence manyof the things that happened only afterGorbachev got ousted from power. Forexample, the golden age of arms con-trol that occurred during the Gorbachevera, from the INF treaty to START I,was a continuation of classical armscontrol. It was an effort to create sta-bility through restraints of variouskinds. And although it included un-precedented reductions of nuclear arms,

the agreements were essentially ColdWar agreements in content, context,and structure. They were bilateral, andthey were designed to ameliorate a fun-damental U.S.-Soviet conflict. Gor-bachev did put forward proposals fortotal disarmament. But should thosehave been taken seriously? Probablynot. If you look at the long history ofSoviet arms-control negotiations, yousee these kinds of sweeping proposals.



[Defense] conversion wasthe main topic of the

briefing we received on our1990 visit to Arzamas-16…In fact, they told us…they

had already convertedabout 15 per cent of their

activities to non-defense work. Krik Krikorian

Don Eilers

… Khariton and Pavlovskiitook the initiative to give

us a list of topics for possible collaboration

when Dan Stillman and I visited Arzamas-16 in December 1991. Dan

delivered that list to Sig.

In 1946, the Soviet reaction to theBaruch plan to put nuclear weaponsunder international control was, “No,but let’s disarm totally.” The statementwas meant to create a political high-ground and at the same time serve thepolitical interest of the Soviet Union,which was to have their own nucleararsenal.

When put to the test, Gorbachev didnot act as if he took these broader goalsseriously. If you remember, it took himtwo weeks to admit that the accident atChernobyl happened. Near the end ofhis reign, the United States put forwardthe Open Skies proposal, a transparencymeasure that had very little negative se-curity consequences, but Gorbachevstonewalled on that, primarily in re-sponse to the concerns of his military.

I believe the real government-levelchanges didn’t start until the coup, itsfailure, and then the collapse of the So-viet Union. And for anything that oc-curred prior to the collapse that por-tended later changes, one really needsto ask oneself whether or not that wasthe intention. Soviet diplomats andacademics, for example, were travelingto international conferences and startingevery statement with the words, “Now Ioffer only my personal opinion.” Itwas somewhat surprising to all of us inthat era of glasnost that all their person-al opinions were the same!

Steve Younger: I agree with Joe inmany respects. Certainly, informationwas tightly controlled until the 1990s.There were some publication of forbid-den novels, but it was a crime to havethem, and they were viewed as sociallyunacceptable, almost as pornography isviewed in this country. Foreign maga-zines and newspapers were available toonly a very limited number of people.And Sakharov, the golden boy of theirnuclear program, was treated veryroughly, as were some of their otherscientists. One other thing I’d like tomention. Sometimes Americans like tothink that the Russians didn’t really likecommunism and wanted to be just likeus. But that’s not true. Many of them

believed in communism as a philosoph-ical system that was better than capital-ism. And many of them still do today.Until recently Russians lived in an ele-ment of fear. They were not “just likeus” in this respect.

Sig Hecker: It’s probably true that thecapitalistic system didn’t look verygood to them. After all, what was fea-tured in their media year after year wasthe poverty, the street people, thecrime, and all of that.

Joe Pilat: Look at the recent Dumaelections. The communists are the top

party. Even during glasnost, Gor-bachev’s behavior was often in contra-diction to the goals of his book. Glasnost has come before in Russianhistory, and each time it passed by veryquickly. All I’m saying is, if one talksabout a wind of change, one needs tobe very careful about how you attributecausality to it.

Paul White: I agree that the directionof the individual technical contacts wasvery different than the direction inwhich the government was moving atthe time. Certainly the contacts be-tween people like Max, and Krik, andothers in a variety of circles, made itpossible for the proposal for collabora-tion on fusion research that was madeto Irv. It could not have happenedwithout all that went before. Thosecontacts built a set of personal relation-ships and the first beginnings of someinstitutional relationships. Then, whenthe political environment changed inDecember 1991, those relationshipsmade it possible for a reaching out tooccur with official sanctions and with asuccessful outcome.

Steve Younger: Before the collapse,the Russians lived under a system inwhich they had just a few very closefriends because, if they talked toofreely outside that circle, they couldend up disappearing one night, andtheir names would be removed from theofficial registers. So I don’t think it’spossible to overestimate the importanceof these personal interactions. The re-lationship between Max Fowler andPavlovskii, for example, during the ini-tial stages of starting up the scientificinteractions with Arzamas-16 was ab-solutely essential to getting things offthe ground.

Sig Hecker: The progress since thenwas immensely faster because we hap-pened to have a number of people whoover the years have been able to buildpersonal relationships, from John Shan-er, to Max Fowler, to Don Eilers, toHugh Casey, and so forth.



I agree that the direction of the individual

technical contacts was verydifferent than the directionin which the government

was moving at the time. …Then, when the political environment changed in December 1991, those relationships made it

possible for a reaching outto occur with official sanctions and with a successful outcome.

Paul White

The Soviet Collapse and theLab Directors’ Visits

Sig Hecker:

The big opportunity toget Washington support for direct col-laborations with the Russian nuclear in-stitutes came on December 16, 1991 inLeesburg, Virginia. Admiral Watkins,then Secretary of Energy, was holding aretreat for DOE Lab Directors. Manymomentous events had already occurredin the Soviet Union, including theabortive coup attempt and Yeltsin’sheroic stand, and it was clear that theSoviet Union was breaking up into sep-arate independent states. PresidentBush was worrying about a possible“brain drain”of Russian nuclear scien-tists to would-be nuclear proliferantssuch as Iran and Iraq, and Congresswas working on the Nunn-Lugar legis-lation to help prevent the Soviet nucleararsenal from being broken up.

Watkins raised the topic of a braindrain with the Lab Directors, and so weorganized a special evening session atwhich Vic Alessi outlined some back-ground on arms control and nonprolif-eration. At one point Watkins, showingobvious frustration and concern, askedus, “What can be done to keep theirscientists there?” Of course, I had beentrying to get Washington interested inletting us work with their nuclear insti-tutes for a year or more. I raised myhand and I said, “Let me tell you Ad-miral. If I were in their shoes, as a di-rector of one of their institutes, I wouldhave all kinds of ideas about how tokeep my scientists at home. So whydon’t we go ask them?” Watkins re-sponded immediately with, “Why don’tyou?” And at the end of that session,Polly Gault, who was his Chief ofStaff, walked up to me and John Nuck-olls and said, “Can you go to Russiabefore Christmas?” Christmas was too

soon, but by mid-February their Direc-tors were here, and by the end of Feb-ruary, John Nuckolls and I went over toRussia. Those were the first steps to-ward the lab-to-lab program.

Los Alamos Science:

Did the DOE fi-nally get behind the lab-to-lab effort?

Sig Hecker: Yes, once Watkins said itwas important, everyone felt liberatedand became very supportive from thatpoint on. And so our folks worked

closely with the DOE and the State De-partment to make the visits happen.Also, Irv Lindemuth and BobReinovsky made a trip to Arzamas-16in January, and we asked Irv and Bobto request that Directors Belugin andNechai extend an invitation to the DOELab Directors to visit Arzamas-16 andChelyabinsk-70. They evidently agreedimmediately.

Irv Lindemuth: Bob and I made surethat we established, not just interest onthe part of Belugin and Nechai, but alsospecific dates for the visits. We alsodelivered the first formal scientific sem-inars to be presented at Arzamas-16 byAmericans.

Los Alamos Science: Who was mak-ing it happen in Russia?

Sig Hecker: I think Viktor Mikhailovwas a substantial driver. He certainlygave his blessing to the Directors’ ex-changes, and it appears from all the sto-ries we just heard that he may havemasterminded the early visits to Arza-mas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70 in 1990and so forth. In all the deliberationsthat followed the initial Directors’ ex-changes, their Directors and scientistsseemed able to call the shots and toguarantee that Mikhailov would ap-prove.

Los Alamos Science: In the initial ex-change, Vladimir Belugin, the Directorof Arzamas-16 and Vladimir Nechai,the Director of Chelyabinsk-70 visitedLivermore and Los Alamos.

Sig Hecker: Yes. And for the mostpart the interactions were quite formaland even suspicious. The friendliestpart was an interaction between BorisLitvinov and my wife at our museum.



Part II The Lab-to-Lab Program in Scientific Conversion and Nuclear Materials Control

“Let me tell you Admiral.If I were in their shoes,

as a director of one of theirinstitutes, I would have all kinds of ideas about

how to keep my scientists athome. So why don’t we go

ask them?”

My wife speaks Polish, and it turnedout his Ukranian and her Polish wereclose enough that they could actuallycarry on a conversation.

Steve Younger: But for me there wascertainly some scientific excitementduring their visit to Los Alamos, espe-cially during the lecture that Pavlovskiidelivered. It was the most excitingphysics talk that I ever heard. Hespoke about nuclear reactors and atomicphysics and plasma physics and pulsedpower and lasers and everything youcould think of, all with the air of some-one who had worked extensively inevery area. I knew right then that nomatter where he was from, we had towork with him.

Los Alamos Science: Sig, in what waywas the visit to Russia different?

Sig Hecker: From the moment westepped off the plane at Arzamas-16,the offer of friendship was obvious. Ihad brought John Immele, then Associ-ate Director for Nuclear Weapons, andJohn Shaner from Los Alamos, andJohn Nuckolls, then Director of Liver-more, had brought along George Millerand Chuck McDonald. That eveningKhariton gave a talk on the early daysof nuclear weapons. He talked abouthis doctoral work in the UK at theCavendish Laboratory under Rutherfordfrom 1926 to 1928, and he related thestory of why they copied and tested ourdevice when they were first designingtheir atomic bomb—they knew it wouldwork, and their lives were at stake.

The next morning John Immele andI experienced the pleasing irony ofbeing the first two Americans to take anearly morning jog in this once secretcity. The temperature was a grizzlyminus 5 degrees fahrenheit, but wecouldn’t turn down the opportunity.The first morning a guard restricted ourrun to the circumference of a nearbysoccer field. But afterwards I com-plained to Belugin, and then John and Iwere free to run into town, throughapartment building complexes, and in



Left to right: V. Chernyshev, I. Lindemuth, L. Gerdova, R. Reinovsky, Alevtina, and N.

Bidylo during Lindemuth’s and Reinovsky’s January 1992 visit to Arzamas-16. They

are standing in front of the house once occupied by Andrei Sakharov.

Discussions in the House of Scientists at Arzamas-16 during the February 1992 visit by

DOE Lab Directors. In the foreground, John Immele (right) sits across from Alexander

Pavlovskii and Sig Hecker sits across from Yuli Khariton.

their beautiful woods along the river.We were also treated to fine dinners

every night, and of course, the Russianslike to drink vodka and make toast aftertoast. The best toast I gave was at thebig banquet at Arzamas at the end ofour stay there. I said, “Now after fiftyyears of competition and being adver-saries, we are learning to work with theRussians, and we are finding that wehave much in common. However, weall know that competition is importantto success. So thank God for Liver-

more! But, then maybe we can learn towork with them as well.” They allbroke out in laughter—because the rela-tionship between Arzamas-16 andChelyabinsk-70 is just as competitive asthe relationship between Los Alamosand Livermore.

John Shaner: We spent some time atChelyabinsk-70 during this visit to Rus-sia. And while there, we worked outthe beginnings of an agreement for col-laboration with both institutes.

Sig Hecker: The scene at Chelyabin-sk-70 was fantastic. There we were,people from Los Alamos and Liver-more, and then Chelyabinsk-70 andArzamas-16, sitting around a tablecrafting this document in Litvinov’s of-fice with a picture of Lenin on the walland beside it, a big picture of Kurcha-tov, the scientific leader of the nuclearenergy program.

John Shaner: It was like the Tokyostock exchange. People running around



The participants in the February 1992 Directors’ exchange visit are standing in front of the monumental statue of Igor Kurchatov

(scientific leader of the Soviet nuclear energy program) at the nuclear design institute at Chelyabinsk-70.

with sheets of paper yelling andscreaming in at least two different languages.

Sig Hecker: We would get into road-blocks because the same word meansdifferent things in Russian and English.The amazing thing is we came up withan agreement. And, of course, theRussians wanted us to sign it, so wedid, but only after including a largenumber of caveats that the agreement

was not binding without U.S. govern-ment approval. The list of topics forcollaboration began with scientific ex-periments and then went down throughnuclear materials control, nuclear safetyand security, and various arms-control-related things. We promised to take itback to Admiral Watkins for approval,and they said they would take it toMikhailov.

Los Alamos Science: Was there any

indication during that first visit or laterthat their scientists were worried abouta brain drain, an exodus of talent andideas?

Sig Hecker: It was certainly apparentthat they were facing economic hard-ship, but they did not approach us onthat basis. They made it clear from thebeginning that what they wanted fromus was collaboration. Pavlovskii, inparticular, indicated very forcibly dur-ing the Los Alamos visit that they werenot interested in welfare. They clearlyfelt that they were our equals and didnot want to be treated in any other way.And more to the point, they said thatbeing able to demonstrate that theycould work with Los Alamos on scien-tific projects would buy them signifi-cant credibility with their government.That was a key issue. In due time wealso realized that they knew a few U.S.dollars went a long way in Russia, andthat fact was, of course, very importantin all that has happened.

John Shaner: Sig, during that firstvisit to Russia, we also tried to getthem interested in participating inISTC.

Sig Hecker: That’s right. John is re-ferring to the International Science andTechnology Center, which wasspawned by Secretary of State JimBaker in connection with the Nunn-Lugar program. The idea was that theUnited States, the European Union, andJapan would provide funding to helpkeep scientists from the New Indepen-dent States busy working on non-nu-clear-weapons-related topics. So thatinitiative had some of the same motiva-tions as our lab-to-lab effort (see “TheInternational Science and TechnologyCenters in the Former Soviet Union”).Our government really wanted theRussian defense labs to take advantageof the ISTC funding mode. I pushedthat pretty hard at Arzamas, but Belug-in and Trutnev were extremely nega-tive. They saw working with us as aray of hope and a mechanism for keep-



During the Directors’ exchange visit of February 1992, the tour bus at Arzamas-16

stops at the firing site where several old flux compression generators are on display.

Pavlovskii shows Directors Sig Hecker and John Nuckolls a laser lab at Arzamas-16.

ing their people stable and working, butthey saw ISTC as nearly worthless. Itold them that if they refused to cooper-ate with this international effort, itwould put us in a rather difficult posi-tion. Their response was interesting.They said that as we get closer to sensi-tive issues such as those associatedwith nonproliferation, they didn’t mindsharing with us, but they wouldn’t wantto share with this kind of broader inter-national community. So despite theyears and years of being Cold War ene-mies, they had a lot more trust andmore interest in working with us thanwith any neutral parties. Later on, ofcourse, they did get involved in theISTC program.

John Shaner: Right now, they proba-bly have a quarter to a third of the totalISTC funding, which is about 84 mil-lion dollars. ISTC didn’t start dispers-ing real money until 1994, but then thescientists at Arzamas-16 and Chelyabin-sk-70 got involved.

Los Alamos Science: The Nunn-Lugar program had been announcedprior to your trip, so the Russians

must have been expecting some finan-cial commitment.

Sig Hecker: Yes. Before leaving Rus-sia, we had a close-out dinner withMikhailov in Moscow and he was al-ready complaining about the lack of ac-tion and the lack of money. If I hadn’tmet him at the test site, I would neverhave suspected that he was a very dedi-cated knowledgeable scientist. Heacted much more like a hard-nosedRussian bureaucrat. Afterwards though,Nechai and Belugin assured us thatMikhailov would support the collabora-tions if we could get approval by theU.S. government.

Don Eilers: I’d like to say a fewwords about Mikhailov’s position. Asminister of MINATOM, Mikhailov isresponsible for ten closed cities andtwenty-five other cities that make upthe nuclear-weapons industrial complex.And he always gave the impressionthat it was his personal responsibility tomake sure that each of the one millionpeople who worked in that complexwas supported somehow. He feels atremendous sense of responsibility.

Sig Hecker: It seems that DirectorsBelugin and Nechai feel the same way.During our visit they proudly told usthat the MINATOM complex is respon-sible for about half of the gold miningin the country and about a third of thefertilizer production. MINATOM alsobuilt the 1980s stadium for what was tobe the Olympics in Moscow. The rea-son they gave was that the MINATOMcomplex was an organization thatworked, whereas much of the rest ofRussia was not functioning very well.Now the gold stems from uranium min-ing, and the fertilizer is closely relatedto the production of explosives. Sothose activities are not so surprising.But the MINATOM cities were doingmany other things that were not so ob-viously related to nuclear weapons andnuclear power.

What struck me most, though, wasthe enormous commonality we had withthe Russians from Arzamas-16 in termsof how we treated our jobs, how we feltabout the science we had to do, howwe understood the reasons it needed tobe done, and the patriotism we felt forour country. As I listened to them talk,I could swear, except for the transla-tion, that they were telling our story.Belugin was giving the pitch I used togive about nuclear testing, and Trutnevwas trying to convince me of why wecan’t possibly have a comprehensivetest ban. I listened and then I said,“We’ve made all those arguments.We’ve lost those arguments. And justlike us, you have to start thinking thatyou have to do this job in anotherway.” And so the feelings about ourjobs are just about as identical as youcan get.

The Lab-to-Lab Effort:Getting It Off the Ground

Sig Hecker: On the way back fromRussia, John Nuckolls and I stopped tosee Watkins and presented him with theagreement we had constructed with theRussians. Just about instantly he gaveus the go-ahead to do the scientific col-



Pavlovskii shows the DOE Lab Directors his laboratory for ultra-high magnetic field

experiments.

laboration. And that was the birth ofthe lab-to-lab program. He also saidthat all the other topics needed to beapproved and worked through the samegovernment interagency process that allNunn-Lugar programs were subject to.So he could not approve nuclear mate-rials control and accounting or even theenvironmental topics.

John Shaner: I guess we had gotten alittle carried away with respect to nu-clear-weapons safety and security is-sues, and the National Security Councilsaid, “There’s no way you are going todo that without interagency oversight.”

Sig Hecker: When we got back to LosAlamos, John Immele asked Steve

Younger if he would like to be in-volved. Steve, as program manager forICF (inertial confinement fusion), wasalready working in the area of pulsedpower and was interested in workingwith Pavlovskii. So he picked up theball and really started to run with it.

John Shaner: Next, in May 1992,Paul Stokes from Sandia, Bill Dunlopfrom Livermore, and I had a meetingwith Vic Alessi and Bob Galucci fromthe State Department in which we es-tablished the ground rules for the lab-to-lab process, including getting every-thing briefed in Washington andsupporting other State Department ac-tivities such as ISTC. Galucci was theone who led the group trapped in theBaghdad parking lot at the end of theGulf war, and he also negotiated theagreement with North Korea to stop re-processing their reactor fuel. We werelucky to get his attention to our projectsin between those events. Later in May1992, Steve Younger and I and othersfrom Los Alamos, Sandia, and Liver-more went to Moscow to meet with theRussians and lay the groundwork forscientific interactions.

It took another eighteen months forISTC to get all the bureaucracy in placeand to actually dispense money. Ourlab-to-lab effort was able to start rightaway and included actual contracts tobe paid by our own laboratory-directedresearch and development (LDRD)funds as well as expert exchanges inthe topics for which we’d agreed to de-velop proposals.

Steve Younger: At that May 1992meeting, a curious thing happened. Al-though I was not the head of the dele-gation nor an expert on Russian sci-ence, Pavlovskii singled me out andsaid, “I want to give you a list of pro-posed topics of collaboration, and Iwant you to write comments on it andgive it back to me in the morning.” Iwas later told that the Russians atArzamas-16 had picked me as theirprincipal representative in the UnitedStates. Perhaps it was because I was in



A picnic in a meadow at Arzamas-16 during the June 1992 visit by the Los Alamos

pulsed-power group.

During the June 1992 visit, Steve Younger (second from left) sits across the table from

Yuli Khariton and discusses the Los Alamos response to the topics for collaboration

proposed by the scientists at Arzamas-16.

charge of the Los Alamos pulsed-power effort, which was the area ofcollaboration that Pavlovskii and hiscolleagues had been pushing for sometime. In any case, I marked up the listand crossed out huge sections becausesome of them were very sensitive andothers were outright classified. It wasapparent from their list and from theinteractions at that meeting in May thatone reason the Russians wanted towork with us was because we were theother nuclear superpower, and theywanted to work on nuclear things.They said, now that the Cold War isover, let’s work together to exploit thepeaceful opportunities of nuclear explo-sives or nuclear energy, but also as thenuclear stewards of the superpowers,it’s our responsibility to work together.Our response to many of their propos-als was that we weren’t allowed to talkabout many of the things on their list,but there were some topics that werereal possibilities.

Los Alamos Science: When did youreach a substantive agreement on jointprojects?

Steve Younger: One month later dur-ing our visit to Arzamas-16, we workedout a specific agreement. Other mem-bers of the Los Alamos pulsed-powergroup went with me: Max Fowler, IrvLindemuth, and Bob Reinovsky. Theweek started out in a less than conge-nial fashion with Belugin’s saying tome, “I’m tired of Americans coming tothe Institute and making promises andnot delivering anything. Americanstalk, talk, talk but never do anything.Unless this meeting results in somethingsubstantive, this will be your last visitto Arzamas-16.” Then he got up andwalked out of the meeting room.Pavlovskii then asked to me to give theAmerican response to the 11-page listof topics he had handed me in Moscow.Khariton was sitting across from metaking detailed notes as I spoke. Wewere all in roles we could never haveanticipated. During the week we car-ried out a delicate dance as we explored

which projects in pulsed power were ofmutual interest. They also demonstrat-ed one of their pulsed-power generators,and they invited Max to be the firstAmerican to press a detonator button ata Russian nuclear weapons institute.

Max Fowler: Yes, it was my one and

only visit to Arzamas-16, and they hon-ored me by letting me push the button.Pavlovskii was still alive then.

Steve Younger: Max was also the firstAmerican to accept payment for work-ing at Arzamas-16.

Max Fowler: Yes, I told Pavlovskii,“You know, I’m working for you now,and I would suggest payment—maybean extra vodka toast.” They later gaveme a bottle of vodka as payment, andeveryone signed the label.

Steve Younger: During that trip wealso became acutely aware that many ofthe scientists were facing financial cata-strophe. And I’m not using that wordlightly. It’s one thing not to be able toreplace the TV if it breaks. It’s quiteanother not to be able to buy insulin foryour kid who is a diabetic and who isgoing to die unless you find somemoney. That’s the kind of financialpressure they were facing.

Irv Lindemuth: Even that past Janu-ary, when Bob Reinovsky and I visited,we saw that the people were extremelyconcerned about their future. Inflationhad taken off. They had missed a fewpay checks. And they didn’t knowwhat the future would bring. Duringthe June visit Steve made it clear tothem that we wanted a real collabora-tion, that we were there for the longterm, and that real dollars would be in-volved. We also expressed our concernon a more personal level, which eventually grew into an exciting cultur-al and humanitarian exchange betweenthe Los Alamos and Arzamas-16 communities—what we call the sistercity connection. (See “Arzamas-16 and Los Alamos—The Sister City Relationship”)

Steve Younger: The week was suc-cessful on a number of levels. By Fri-day we had identified six topics inpulsed power and had written andsigned a protocol saying we were goingto do experiments on two of those



We wanted to develop real collaborations,to work side by side

as equals. That phrase is very

important, because therewere a lot of Americans

running around the country… buying Russiantechnology for a song…

Instead, we were saying, “We’re going to be here this year, we’re

going to be here next year,

and if politics allows,we’re going to be

here ten years from now.

Steve Younger

topics, we were going to find fundingfor the experiments, and we were going to carry them out within the nextfiscal year. When I got back to theUnited States, I wrote to Mikhailovsaying that, in my opinion, a collabora-tion existed between Arzamas-16 andLos Alamos.

Then, over the summer we workedout the difficult process of how to fi-nance these activities and how to writesuitable contracts.

Sig Hecker: Steve came to me andsuggested that LDRD funds would bethe most neutral funding source andquite appropriate because we weregoing to engage the Russians in basicscientific enterprises. But we were onextremely thin ice in terms of the fund-ing.

Steve Younger: There were manypeople in the United States who didn’twant us to work with the nuclear insti-tutes. They were afraid we might beworking on nuclear weapons and givingaway secrets. Or maybe we were allspies, or maybe all the money we spentwould go to the communist party.

Irv Lindemuth: John and Steve tookmany trips to Washington to informpeople that we were going to spendLDRD money for this purpose. Al-though some people raised flags, mostwere glad that somebody was doingsomething.

Sig Hecker: John and Steve poundedthe pavement until they won the sup-port of the folks at the DOE. DOE did-n’t come up with any money. We hadto go into our own coffers, but theDOE did back us up so that we couldget this money to the Russians.

Steve Younger: We had another bigproblem, and that was how to movemoney because there was no precedentfor this type of collaboration. JohnShaner and I came up with the conceptof deliverables. When they deliveredthe work, we’d give them the money.

Since no up-front money was involved,there was no way to complain that themoney was being used for some inap-propriate activity.

Sig Hecker: In contrast to the govern-ment-to-government approach, whichwe will be discussing shortly, we decid-ed not to keep track in detail of whatour Russian collaborators did with thatmoney. We didn’t know whether theyhad to pay taxes or support infrastruc-ture. The only thing we knew is that wegot one heck of a lot of return for themoney that we gave them.

Steve Younger: And they feel they re-ceived a fair exchange for what theygave us. But that summer of 1992, wehad many table-pounding conversationsin which they would say we were pay-ing them too little, and we would say,“Hey look, this is how much money wehave. You claim you have lots otherbuyers? Where are they?” And aftercalling their bluff, we would come toan agreement. Then, in October 1992,Pavlovskii and Chernyshev came to LosAlamos to sign the first contracts be-tween Arzamas and Los Alamos.

Los Alamos Science: What was the

agreement in those first contracts?

Steve Younger: We formalized whatwe had agreed to in June, namely, tocollaborate on two experiments. Onewas a test of Chernyshev’s very bighigh-explosive pulsed-power generatorto be done at Arzamas. The secondwas a series of experiments in whichPavlovskii’s generators would be usedto produce the ultra-high magneticfields and apply them to the measure-ment of the critical magnetic fields ofhigh-temperature superconductors.That series was to be done at LosAlamos in Ancho Canyon (see “Lab-to-Lab Scientific Collaborations betweenLos Alamos and Arzamas-16 usingExplosive-Driven Flux CompressionGenerators”).

The contracts included dollaramounts for various deliverables. Forexample, to test Chernyshev’s generatorat Arzamas, we agreed to pay 100,000dollars, and for the second set of exper-iments at Ancho Canyon, we paid100,000 dollars for five of Pavlovskii’shigh-magnetic-field generators, and wepaid the way for the Russians to cometo Los Alamos. The funding for bothcame from LDRD, and all of thatmoney went to Russia. At that time



Left to right: I. Lindemuth, S. Younger, V. Chernyshev, R. Il’kaev. and Y. Tuminov visit

the new Weapons Museum at Arzamas-16 in September 1993 prior to the first joint ex-

periment. The museum was inspired by the Bradbury Science Museum at Los Alamos.

DOE did not want money that had beenappropriated for the U.S. nuclearweapons program to go to Russia. Af-terwards, that restriction was relaxed,and we were able to spend program-matic money. This year we will sendabout 550,000 dollars to Russia. Thismoney will fund unique science thatneither side could do on its own.

Krik Krikorian: As a contrast, it costus almost 300,000 dollars in 1982-1983to replicate the Pavlovskii generator forproject LIGA.

Los Alamos Science: Pavlovskii diedFebruary 12, 1993. Since his relation-ship with Max Fowler was one of themainstays of trust for building the col-laboration, were you concerned that hisdeath might threaten progress ?

Steve Younger: Yes, very. At the



Scenes from the first joint Los Alamos-

Arzamas-16 experiment in September

1993. The purpose was to test the

DEMG, Chernyshev’s high-current gener-

ator. Top left: Lynn Veeser makes final

adjustments to Los Alamos diagnostics.

Top right: The experimental group poses

at the firing site on the evening before

the test. Right: Americans, dressed in

VNIIEF protective clothing, pose before

Chernyshev’s generator.

time we received notice of his death,Carl Ekdahl, Denny Erickson, Jim Go-forth, Irv Lindemuth, Bob Reinovsky,and I were within a few days of leavingfor a visit to Arzamas-16. We had topostpone the visit, and Irv scrambled toreconstitute the visit within a fewweeks. As soon as we arrived in Arza-mas-16, they took our team to seePavlovskii’s grave, which was moundedwith flowers. We added a large basket

with the inscription “From the Ameri-can colleagues,” and the whole scenewas recorded by the Russians on video-tape.

At the big banquet that evening, Iwas seated next to Yuri A. Trutnev, thedeputy chief scientist at Arzamas-16under Khariton and also a leading de-signer of nuclear-weapon secondaries.To begin with, Trutnev was extremelyskeptical about the joint work with us.

He did not see a path to real collabora-tion and worried about our buying tech-nology and walking away. But wespoke intensely through the entire ban-quet—so much so that during one ofthe breaks (Russian banquets aremarathon affairs so they have breaks!),one of the officials at Arzamas said toTrutnev, “You are not allowing Steveto eat. He must be hungry.” Trutnevmerely pushed him away. Neither ofus ate anything that evening, but by theend we were great friends, and Trutnevunderstood that we were all dedicatedto the national security mission of ourrespective laboratories and that workingtogether might promote the stability andintegrity of both institutions. As tohow to do it, that dinner was the originof the “step-by-step” approach that be-came the cornerstone of the lab-to-labprocess.

During that week, they began to un-derstand that we were there for the longhaul. We didn’t want to steal theirtechnology and run. We wanted to de-velop real collaborations, to work sideby side as equals. That phrase is veryimportant, because there were a lot ofAmericans running around the countrytouting the fact that they were buyingRussian technology for a song, that theRussians weren’t business men, so theywere able to rob them blind. Instead,we were saying, “We’re going to behere this year, we’re going to be herenext year, and if politics allows, we’regoing to be here ten years from now.”

Los Alamos Science: Did all gosmoothly after your March visit?

Steve Younger: Not exactly. The firstexperiment was set for August 1993 inArzamas. But shortly before the sched-uled date, I received word that the ex-periment would have to be delayed be-cause they were not ready. I lost mytemper at that point and had Irv Linde-muth call Chernyshev at 1:00 am Arza-mas-16 time. I told him that I wantedan explanation and I would be inMoscow to be picked up at the appoint-ed time. During that visit we were



Preparations in Ancho Canyon, Los Alamos in September 1993 for a shot to measure

the critical field of high-temperature superconductors.

Bob Reinovsky (right) is in the instrumentation trailer at Ancho Canyon giving instruc-

tions to Olga Tatsenko about the next joint experiment in the series.

taken, as a kind of consolation prize, totheir device assembly area, which isone of the tightest security areas atVNIIEF (the nuclear institute at Arza-mas-16). And there, behind so manyfences that I lost count of the number,we saw Chernyshev’s generator. It is acolumn ten feet tall and is mounted ver-tically. The whole time we were sur-rounded by a ring of Russian techni-cians, each one a huge bear of a person.And when we moved even twenty feetfrom the generator, they would let usknow we were out of line by literallybumping up against us. At one pointJim Goforth stood on a chair to viewthe top of the generator, and one ofthose big burly Russians came over,and with a big smile, just picked upJim at the knees with one arm to givehim a better view.

One month later, that was September1993, we were back for the first jointexperiment. The Russians were clearlyvery excited about it. They held anews conference before the shot.Mikhailov, who was out of the country,was being given daily reports about ourprogress. And three TV crews wereout at the firing point to witness the ac-tual test. Chernyshev’s generator out-fitted with American diagnostics wasflanked on either side by a Russian andan American flag. The tension was sohigh you could have cut it with a knife.Everyone worked feverishly to getready for the countdown, and then five,four, three, two, one . . . The bunkershook and we knew immediately thatall had gone well. There was a tremen-dous shaking of hands and congratula-tions and on-the-spot interviews by thepress. At that very first joint experi-ment, everyone was aware that we weremaking history.

At the banquet the next night, whenall the pressure was off and after theusual toasts, someone began playing anaccordion and there developed a mostamazing sight—Russian and Americanweapons scientists dancing together andtelling jokes and trading family picturesat what had been the most secret placein the Soviet Union. I was reminded of

the statement by former Laboratory Di-rector Norris Bradbury that the purposeof nuclear weapons is not to wage war,but to give the politicians time to solvethe problems.

Max Fowler: The next month, a teamof eight Russians came to Los Alamosto do a series of high-magnetic-field ex-periments using a Pavlovskii generatorand some of our own as well. We wereable to measure the value of the criticalmagnetic field in a high-temperature su-perconductor and how that valuechanges with temperature. I guess I’mrather proud of that work. It was also ahistoric series in the sense that thosewere the first joint Russian-Americanexperiments done behind the fence atLos Alamos.

Sig Hecker: After those successes,Steve was able to engineer a major lab-to-lab umbrella contract with Arzamas-16 that would allow the two labs towork together on scientific topics ofmutual interest. We put a cap on theamount that could be spent, a total of 2million dollars, and identified a large



Sasha Bykov gives Steve Younger an enormous bear hug after the first joint shot at

Ancho Canyon.

… I’m rather proud of [the critical magneticfield] work. It was also a historic series in the

sense that those were thefirst joint Russian-American

experiments done behind the fence at

Los Alamos.

number of potential topics for collabo-ration. The first task orders were writ-ten in a mid-night meeting in Jim Jef-feris’ office that involved Steve, John,and Valeri Zorya from Arzamas-16.By then, Steve had been able to delivermoney for the experiments that we justtalked about, thefirst money thatArzamas had re-ceived from theUnited States, andso Steve was real-ly golden in theireyes. They trustedhim and they likedhim. Similarly, inJanuary 1994when Director Bel-ugin and RadiIl’kaev came herefor the big signingceremony, a realfriendship devel-oped between Bel-ugin and me. Hewas at my homefor dinner, and Ihave photos ofhim watching mecarve the turkey in my kitchen and latersinging Russian folk songs in my din-ing room.

Los Alamos Science: Is the umbrellacontract still in effect, and what hasbeen done under it?

Steve Younger: Yes, it is still in effectand it has become the mainstay of ourcollaboration. Rather than having tohash out all of the legal details onevery contract, the Master Task Orderspecifies this up front so that work canbegin with as little as a two page taskorder. This is why Los Alamos wasable to move so quickly. Similaragreements are now in place with manyother Russian institutes, and other U.S.labs have copied our idea.

Irv Lindemuth: In terms of the pulsedpower work, following the initial exper-iments Steve mentioned earlier, we did

six additional experimental campaignscovering a spectrum from pulsed-powertechnology to solid-state physics tocontrolled fusion.

Sig Hecker: In retrospect, the end of1993 through the beginning of 1994

was the time when the lab-to-lab effortreally began to take off. The pulsed-power work with Arzamas-16 was se-curely established, but also the Industri-al Partnership Program was born.

Steve Younger: The importance of theIndustrial Partnership Program (IPP)and also the umbrella contract werehighlighted in the August 1993 visit be-fore the first joint experiment. Duringthat visit, Director Belugin called measide for a private conversation with nosecurity people present. Only ValeriZorya, senior manager at Arzamas wasthere to translate. Belugin said to me,“The Americans have made a lot ofpromises, but we have not received anymoney. We are facing extreme hard-ship. We are not receiving regularsalaries from our government, we donot have money to buy medical sup-plies for our children, and we are get-ting desperate. If America isn’t going

to help us, we are going to have to dosomething else.”

On my return, I reported this conver-sation to Senator Pete Domenici.That’s the origin of Domenici’s sum-mary of the plight of the Russian nu-clear scientists, “You’re driving us into

the hands of theChinese.” He saidthat on the floorof the Senate dur-ing his plea for aforeign aid appro-priation to supportto the Russian sci-entists. Duringthe fall of 1993,Irv Lindemuth andI went all overWashington todrum up moneyand support, andto sell the idea ofscientific conver-sion, the idea thatwe need to sup-port Russian nu-clear scientists todo non-nuclearscientific work.

John Shaner and I developed the con-cept of scientific conversions—engag-ing the core Russians nuclear weaponsexperts on topics of basic scientific in-terest and integrating them into the in-ternational scientific community. Afterall, you weren’t going to convert a sec-ondary designer into a designer of bicy-cles. They were proud of their skills.Scientific conversion tried to applythose skills to peaceful projects, sort ofa half-way house in getting them intolong term, Russian-funded research pro-jects. At the same time, John Hnatio, aDOE employee on assignment withDomenici’s staff, was trying to developthe concept of an industrial partnershipprogram with the scientists of the for-mer Soviet Union.

Hugh Casey: Yes, this was an ex-tremely fortunate coincidence. JohnHnatio was the DOE program managerwho was in charge of the early stages



A flux compression generator is on its side at Chernyshev’s firing site at Arzamas-16

in April 1994 and is being prepared to measure the properties of magnetized plasmas.

of the technology transfer program atDOE and helped us acquire the gyro-tron equipment from the Ukraine thatwe had first discussed at the MATecconference back in 1988. He was alsoinstrumental in setting up the SpecialMetals Processing Consortium at San-dia National Laboratory. Those twoprograms involved Russian technology,and when John moved to Domenici’soffice, he proposed them as models forpartnering among industry, the nationallabs, and the Russian institutes.

John formed a lab team from LosAlamos, Lawrence Livermore, Sandia,Argonne, and Oak Ridge National Lab-oratories to develop a program plan thatDOE could propose to the State Depart-ment. Domenici initiated legislation toprovide funds. And those actions re-sulted in the development of the pro-gram (see “The New IndependentStates Industrial Partnership Program”).

IPP differed from ISTC in encourag-ing direct interaction between U.S. lab-oratory and NIS institute staff. Alsothe IPP concept involved an ‘exit strat-egy’ whereby the funding responsibilitywould transfer from the government toprivate industry over the life of the pro-ject. Technology transfer and commer-cialization were to be used as a nonpro-liferation tool to prevent “brain drain.”

John Shaner: The congressional lan-guage stated that the program was toaddress institutes and scientists withknowledge of weapons of mass destruc-tion. The other criterion was that fundsbe used for projects that were potential-ly self-sustainable economically. IPPhas an end game of self-sustainability.

Los Alamos Science: What level offunding was obtained for IPP?

Hugh Casey: Domenici succeeded ingetting an appropriation of 35 milliondollars for fiscal year 1994, which wasintended to grow to 50 million dollarsfor fiscal year 1995 and continue for aperiod of five years at which time wehoped that projects would be supportedentirely by private industry. In fact, we

received the 35 million dollars at theend of fiscal year 1994 and only aftergreat bureaucratic arm wrestling. Wereceived no funds in fiscal year 1995,but we have 10 million dollars of DOEfunds for fiscal year 1996, and we ex-pect an additional 10 million dollars ofDOD Nunn-Lugar funds for this year.Despite the funding struggles, the pro-gram has been most successful, and weare aware of Senate-committee recom-mendations calling for increases infunding for fiscal year 1997 and be-yond. We are extremely optimisticabout the future of IPP.

John Shaner: Along with these ef-forts, we have continued to supportother government programs such asISTC. As early as October 1992, wehad the first of our topical expert ex-changes that had been worked out dur-ing the previous May meeting. Four-teen of us from Los Alamos, Sandia,and Livermore flew to Chelyabinsk-70,picking up a contingent from Arzamas-16 on the way, for a week-long confer-ence on environmental science. As aresult of that conference, we not onlygot to know a new set of faces, but wealso worked out a set of twelve propos-als for joint work. To date, seven oreight have been funded through ISTC.We have also held technical meetingson reactor safety, applied math, andcomputer science.

Hugh Casey: It’s interesting that wehave experienced spontaneous integra-tion of ISTC and IPP projects. That in-creases the possibility of funding largerprojects and also brings industry in as afull partner in the early stages of theseprojects.

One last point. In all my experiencewith international exchanges, includingthose with the British, the French, andthe Japanese, the Russian exchangesprovide the only example in whichtechnical information is flowing pre-dominantly into, as opposed to out of,the United States. The former SovietUnion is our technological equal inmany areas, and because of the eco-

nomic crisis in the New IndependentStates, we are gaining valuable knowl-edge for modest investments. This factis not appreciated by those that dismissour efforts as “foreign aid,” and “indus-trial welfare.”

Nunn-Lugar and the Lab-to-Lab Materials Control

Program

Sig Hecker: We are at a point to tellthe nuclear material controls story,which has been my primary interestfrom the beginning. Shortly after Sec-retary of Energy O’Leary was appoint-ed, I wrote a letter to her and identifiedthe control of nuclear materials in theformer Soviet Union as the most impor-tant national security issue facing theDOE. I did not get much of a responsefrom Washington until over a year laterin April 1994 when Charlie Curtis wasappointed as Under Secretary in chargeof national security programs. Our in-troductory meeting happened to be onthe day after he had been taken to taskat a Congressional hearing on reportedthefts of nuclear materials in the formerSoviet Union. The hearing was insti-gated by Tom Cochran of the NaturalResources Defense Council and otherantinuclear watchdogs. There werecomplaints that the government-to-gov-ernment efforts in nuclear material con-trol under Nunn-Lugar were boggeddown, that we were at loggerheads withthe Russians, and that nothing muchwas being done to prevent theft of thesedangerous materials.

When I walked in to see Curtis, Istarted giving the speech on materialscontrol that I’d been giving for almost ayear. Curtis responded immediatelywith, “What do you want to do?” AndI had a plan in my back pocket that hadbeen laid out at the Los Alamos meet-ing in January 1994 when Belugin andI had signed the lab-to-lab umbrellacontract. At that time Mark Mullen,Ron Augustson, and some of the folksfrom Arzamas-16 had suggested that alab-to-lab materials control component



to be included in the lab-to-lab umbrel-la contract. They were very frustratedwith the lack of progress on the bigstorage facility they had been workingon through the Nunn-Lugar channels,and they also explained that the Nunn-Lugar effort to institute materials con-trol at civilian institutes was flounder-ing. Consequently, the lab-to-labchannel looked like a much more hope-ful route to improving materials controlin Russia. Don Cobb, Program Direc-tor for Nonproliferation at Los Alamos,discussed this possibility with Beluginand myself at that January meeting, andwe all agreed that it was a good idea.

But remember, we were under somerestrictions set by DOE. John Birely,Paul White, Ron Augustson and manyother folks at the Lab were working inthe government-to-government modesince 1992 because Watkins had told usthat all topics other than pure sciencehad to be considered through the intera-gency process associated with theNunn-Lugar legislation.

Los Alamos Science: Before we goforward with the lab-to-lab materialsstory, let’s backtrack for a moment andask Paul White to give us a little back-ground on the purpose of the Nunn-Lugar program.

Paul White: The Nunn-Lugar effortgrew out of a meeting in September of1991 between Bush and Gorbachev.They were proposing literally unprece-dented reductions in nuclear warheads,especially tactical warheads, some ofwhich were agreed to under START Ior planned under START II. They alsobegan talking specifically about disman-tlement of those warheads. Noting theeconomic burden involved, Bush of-fered U.S. assistance for the dismantle-ment of those strategic and tactical sys-tems. The official implementation ofthat offer came in November of 1991with the so-called Nunn-Lugar pro-gram, which authorized the use of 400million dollars of Department of De-fense funds, funds that had alreadybeen appropriated for other things.

The program got off the ground inMarch of 1992 at a big meeting withthe Russians involving 60 representa-tives of the United States. Some of theframework agreements under whichNunn-Lugar assistance would be pro-vided were crafted at that meeting. Themovement of missile systems and war-

heads back to Russia would increasethe exposure of these systems to thepossibility for an accident, so emer-gency response equipment was one areaof assistance that was on the table.Other areas for assistance included stor-age facilities for putting the materialsthat would come out of dismantlement,containers for moving the materials, in-creased security and protection for thewarheads while they were in transit,and material control and accounting

systems for the storage facilities. Mate-rials control and accounting systems forcivilian nuclear facilities were also dis-cussed at that time.

Los Alamos Science: Was there anyindication that the Russians were wor-ried about the security of their nuclearmaterials?

Krik Krikorian: By that time the So-viet Union had become a confederationof independent states, and nuclearweapons were in the Ukraine, Belarus,Kazakhstan and so on. Somehow thoseweapons had to be brought into Russiaand put somewhere and disassembled.But the physical security forces wereno longer reporting to one government,so there were inherent problems of ma-terials control.

Paul White: Actually separate agree-ments were crafted with Ukraine, withKazakhstan, and with Belarus. Theagreement with the Russian Federationreally emphasized a new look at the ex-isting system of government securityand accounting for nuclear materialsand then the development of appropri-ate changes to accommodate the newpolitical situation. There weren’t reallyany discussions about weaknesses inthe basic security. But during informalconversations, one of the first questionssome Russians asked me was how todeal with the question of personnel reli-ability at their nuclear facilities.

John Shaner: And in the less formallab-to-lab context, I remember one ofthe chief designers at Arzamas-16 say-ing, “You Americans are lucky. Yourborders have always been permeableand your military not very well disci-plined, so you had to design these ma-terials controls into your system. Wehad impermeable borders and a welldisciplined military until a few yearsago, and now we have neither, and wedon’t have those controls designed intoour system.” So the scientists alreadyknew that there was a potential problemthere.



Shortly after Secretary of Energy O’Leary was

appointed, I wrote a letterto her and identified the

control of nuclear materialsin the former Soviet Union

as the most important national security issue

facing the DOE.

Sig Hecker: John’s comments hit thenail right on the head in terms of theoverall security problems of both theweapons and the materials. But thematerials control and accountabilityissue was one of the most difficultthings to get the Russians at Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70 to talk about.During our February 1992 visit, I askedquestions and essentially got no an-swers. At Arzamas-16, I told them Ihad a personal interest in plutonium,and I kept asking, “Where do you dothe plutonium work?” At Arzamas-16they said they do it someplace else. InChelyabinsk-70 they actually toured usthrough their plutonium lab, which wasup on the third story of some building.

John Shaner: Right above the tritiumlab.

Sig Hecker: It’s clear they would nothave passed inspection by AdmiralWatkins’ Tiger Teams that had justbeen through Los Alamos. I would askthem, “Suppose there was some sort ofa threat in the country and you wouldhave to ascertain within a couple ofhours whether you have all of your plu-tonium. How would you respond tothat kind of question.” I just got thisstony silence.

Paul White: These materials controlissues are so closely tied with their se-

curity system that they constitute a verydifficult area for them to talk about.The initial contacts on materials controlwere at the government level underNunn-Lugar. And they weren’t aboutto admit officially that they had diffi-culties. So progress was agonizinglyslow, particularly in that area.

Ron Augustson: Mark Mullen and Iparticipated in the government-to-gov-ernment program to design and build astorage facility for retired nuclear war-heads, and our job was to design amodern MPC&A system, that is, Mate-

rials Protection, Control, and Account-ing system, for the facility. It turns outthat our Russian counterparts for thistask were Radi Il’kaev, Sergei Zykov,and Vladimir Yuferev from Arzamas-16. We first met them at the meetingheld by the U.S. Corps of Engineers inOmaha, Nebraska in August 1992. Atthat time they expressed their commit-ment and responsibility regarding theretirement and disposal of nuclearweapons. Il’kaev said very earnestly toMark and me, “Arzamas-16 and LosAlamos have caused this problem, andit is up to us to solve it.”



In June 1994, Directors Belugin and Hecker sign contracts to build a materials control

demonstration at Arzamas-16 as Il’kaev (seated), Augustson (standing at back left), and

others look on. The demonstration was up and running by January 1995.

Steve Younger is flanked by Radi Il’kaev and his wife Lydia after a late night meeting at Arzamas-16. To the right of Lydia are Yuri

Romanov, who wrote the computer code for the design of the first hydrogen bomb, and Vladimir Rogatchev, the deputy director of

the theoretical division. Their friendship was instrumental in helping to start the lab-to-lab materials control program.

However, progress on the storage fa-cility was extremely slow. Meetingswere held through 1992 and 1993, buteverything was bogged down in thepolitics and administrative requirementsof working with the Department of De-fense. There was no money to pay theworkers in Russia to build the facilityand no money to buy Russian materialsand equipment. The DOD wanted allthe money to be spent here in thiscountry. On the other side, the Rus-sians did not admit the importance ofour particular interests, which weresafety analysis and protecting materialsfrom insider threats.

It was all very discouraging, but wedid continue to talk with Il’kaev andparticularly with Zykov and Yuferev.For example, Mark met them in Octo-ber of 1992 at a Nunn-Lugar-sponsoredseminar in St. Petersburg on MPC&A.There were about a hundred Russianparticipants, but Mark spent most of histime with the folks from Arzamas-16and started to communicate more in-tensely. He also began describing tothem the components of a modern com-puterized material control and account-ing system and even drew one on apaper napkin that would be suitable fora storage facility. Mark was gratifiedto see how quickly Sergei Zykovpicked up the concepts, and he andSergei were able to discuss specific de-signs and problems almost immediately.

Los Alamos Science: Did the Rus-sians finally admit that they neededsuch systems?

Ron Augustson: During the spring of1992 and through the summer, we stillweren’t hearing that there was a prob-lem. But as the contacts grew, not onlywith the folks from Arzamas but withothers as well, we learned that the Rus-sians have a tremendous system ofpaper records, but nobody checks thoserecords, and they were never meant tobe used to draw an inventory. The em-phasis was on putting product out, mak-ing a certain number of weapons from acertain amount of material. If they had

a good process, they’d have more plu-tonium than they needed and they’d putthat aside in case they ever had a needfor it. After a while, they would losetrack of where they put the stuff.Through the fall of 1992 and into 1993,we were definitely getting the picturethat they didn’t have a good idea ofhow much plutonium or highly en-riched uranium they had at any givenlocation.

Sig Hecker: In April 1993, Trutnevwas here, and he also started to open upa little bit on this issue. It wasn’t untilI was at Arzamas-16 in June 1994 tosign the lab-to-lab agreement on nu-clear materials control, more than twoyears after I had first broached the sub-ject, that Belugin admitted they had thatkind of problem. We went to visit thefamous convent at Divejevo, abouttwenty kilometers outside of Arzamas-16, and we went through a doubleguarded fence. And I asked, “How doyou know that someone doesn’t get outof this place with plutonium in theirlunchbox?” And he said, “It can’t hap-pen.” And I said, “How do you knowit can’t?” And he said, ”Because the

consequences would be grave if some-one tried to do this.” And I pressedfurther, “But how do you know thatthey’re not getting any out? And thenhe finally said, “It’s a problem.” Ittook that long for them to really admitthey would not know if someone hadstolen some material. They were prettywell protected from the outsider threat.After all, they still do have the doublefence around the whole town, not justtheir facilities. But with Russia fallingapart, the insider threat became worri-some and that’s what finally got themto agree to working with us on theproblem.

Ron Augustson: Before that, in thefall of 1993, Mark and I had developeda close working relationship withIl’kaev, Yuferev, and Zykov, and that’swhen we decided to ask Sig if we couldinclude the materials work in the um-brella contract of January 1994. Sigtold us he couldn’t do it without DOEapproval.

Los Alamos Science: Sig, how did youfinally break through this bureaucraticbarrier and get the materials controlwork off the ground?

Sig Hecker: It started with that intro-ductory meeting with Under SecretaryCurtis in April 1994. As I said earlier,he had been challenged by Congress onthe issue of theft and on the fact thatthe Nunn-Lugar effort was not gettinganywhere. So when I suggested a lab-to-lab materials control effort, hejumped at the chance and said that hewould come up with some money if wecould make the arrangements. Howmuch did we need? I said about twomillion dollars for fiscal year 1994 andmaybe ten million for the next year.Charlie said he would find the moneyone way or another and we should justgo do it. And we decided it would beincluded under the lab-to-lab umbrellacontract that we had signed in Januarywith Arzamas-16. I then went to SteveYounger and the next key moment waswhen Steve called Il’kaev on the tele-



[Under Secretary Charlie Curtis] had been challenged by Congress

on the issue of theft and on the fact that theNunn-Lugar effort was not getting anywhere. So when I suggested a

lab-to-lab materials control effort, he jumped at the chance and said that he would come up

with some money if we could make the

arrangements

phone and proposed that we do a jointMPC&A program. That’s when thetrust we had built up through the scien-tific interactions really paid off.

Steve Younger: I called Il’kaev andsaid, “Look, I know it’s an issue of na-tional sovereignty, but my governmentconsiders it important that we begin alab-to-lab program on materials control.

Is that possible?” Il’kaev, of course,had to get guidance from Moscow,from Mikhailov I assume, but it tookonly one weekend of telephoning backand forth and we had approval from theRussian side. After that Mark Mullen,Gene Kutyreff, and Ron Augustsontook over and did the enormous job ofplanning the actual program. I thinkthey worked round the clock for several

days to get a plan organized that wecould present to Charlie Curtis.

Sig then told Charlie that it was a“go” with the Russians, and Charliecarved out two million dollars for fiscalyear 1994. Six weeks later Sig was atArzamas-16 to sign the first six con-tracts for a lab-to-lab nuclear materialcontrol program. And within twomonths a demonstration of MPC&Awas being constructed at Arzamas-16.Half of the equipment at the demonstra-tion was Russian and half was Ameri-can. Everything about the demonstra-tion was planned together, and the planwas written in Russian and English.

Los Alamos Science: How did all thishappen so quickly?

Ron Augustson: Well, we had beendiscussing materials control systems forthe storage facility, and specifically theRussian capabilities in that area, for al-most two years with Zykov, Yuferev,and Il’kaev. So it was rather easy todevelop plans that would involve theRussians as real partners with us. Theidea was to create a demonstration ofcontrol and accounting systems atArzamas that could be viewed by offi-cials at other institutions in MI-NATOM. It would demonstrate thevalue of modern computerized systemsto counter threats from insiders.

Paul White: We need to recognizethat this lab-to-lab agreement on doingmaterials control was a tremendousbreakthrough. The government-to-gov-ernment process was completely para-lyzed by a collection of difficulties: thesensitivity of the issue, the questions ofpride, the organizational questions with-in the Russian government of who’s re-sponsible for what. But while thesedifficulties were occurring, discussionswere going on between Mark Mullenand Sergei Zykov and others. And per-sonal friendship and trust with peoplelike Il’kaev were being establishedthrough the scientific interactions, andboth of these allowed the breakthroughto occur.



The Kurchatov Institute in Moscow houses some nuclear materials, but not until the in-

stitute joined the lab-to-lab MPC&A program were appropriate safeguards installed.

The assembly/disassembly area at the MPC&A demonstration at Arzamas-16. All

equipment is hooked up to central computers, and when unauthorized changes are de-

tected, an alarm appears on the monitor (see circled image in the inset photo) and is

broadcast throughout the system.

Steve Younger: As we’ve stressed, theissue of personal trust is extremely im-portant in Russia. I still rememberwhen Sig and Belugin signed the firstnuclear materials control contracts inJune 1994. There was a pause as Belu-gin picked up his pen. He looked overat Sig, and you could see him thinking,“I’m taking a hell of a risk here. Andyou had better be telling me the truth.”Not only their careers, but also theirfamilies’ reputations and their chil-dren’s’ education were at stake. Theyall remembered what happened to peo-ple after Khruschev’s thaw froze again.

Sig Hecker: Belugin gave me his penafter the signing.

Krik Krikorian: It’s clear that thelab-to-lab science programs were theconfidence building programs in dealingwith those folks. I think that’s the bot-tom line. Money was transferred, goodfaith was transferred, the products actu-ally came out, and the respect was de-veloped.

We should also point out that appar-ently Mikhailov has been behind theMPC&A from the beginning and hisendorsement opened the door to fastimplementation.

Los Alamos Science: How did LosAlamos expand the MPC&A activitiesbeyond MINATOM to Kurchatov andthe other civilian institutions?

Sig Hecker: Most important was thatCharlie Curtis had given me clear juris-diction to make decisions, saying,“Look Sig, Los Alamos should lead thelabs in doing this and you should dothe right thing.” So we were able toassure the Russians at these institutionsthat we were the lead laboratory andcould determine the way things weregoing to happen. Il’kaev definitelywanted Arzamas to take the lead in theMINATOM complex, and he thoughtMikhailov would support that approach,but Kurchatov was run independently,and then there was their GAN, which isthe Russian equivalent to our Nuclear

Regulatory Commission.For those organizations, we again

built on the personal contacts that Ronand his whole crew had developedthrough many years of work in theIAEA. For example, Ron and MarkMullen had friends at Kurchatov whohad participated in IAEA activities andactually understood materials problems.So during the June 1994 trip, we went

to Kurchatov to establish an agreementon MPC&A. While at Kurchatov, wewitnessed their security problems inreal time. We went into their reactorwhere they have a lot of highly en-riched uranium, and there was a guardon duty, but he didn’t even have a rifle.The institute is right off the streets ofMoscow. There were not even bars onsome of the windows. And so it wasbrought home that materials protectionand control really is a serious issue.We signed an agreement with Kurcha-tov, and then through the lab-to-lab ap-

proach, we have expanded to other in-stitutions that have significant amountsof weapons material.

Ron Augustson: Actually, our con-tacts at Kurchatov are doing us a bigfavor right now, because they served asan entree into the Russian naval fuelstorage facilities for ship and submarinereactors. And this week, as we speak,there is a group of lab-to-lab peopleover at Kurchatov showing the navypeople how we do vulnerability assess-ments.

Los Alamos Science: What is the pre-sent status of the materials work?

Ron Augustson: It’s been going re-markably well. First, I should point outthat, although Los Alamos is the leadlaboratory for this activity, five otherDOE national laboratories are now par-ticipating: Lawrence Livermore, Sandia,Brookhaven, Oak Ridge, and PacificNorthwest. Together we've developeda working relationship and a programplan with eight MINATOM institutes,and we plan to add two more to the listthis spring. Within the program, theRussians are working busily on imple-menting MPC&A systems, integratingU.S. equipment into the systems, andgearing up to produce Russian equip-ment to use at the most sensitive loca-tions within their facilities. In theprocess of implementation, hundreds ofRussian technical people are becomingMPC&A experts. Those experts areneeded to operate, maintain, design,and update the MPC&A systems in thenear future. So together, we're imple-menting and building infrastructure forshort- and long-term improved safe-guards (see “Russian-AmericanMPC&A: Nuclear Materials Protec-tion, Control, and Accounting in Russia”).

Our success in this area led to thetransfer of the government-to-govern-ment effort in MPC&A from DOD toDOE. That transfer became official infiscal year 1996. The understandingwas that DOE would operate the pro-



With this experience and expertise under ourbelts, the United States and Russia will be in a

position to provide leader-ship to the world in global

management of nuclear material.

Ron Augustson

gram in the manner of the lab-to-labprogram, which included the ability towrite contracts to pay for work by Rus-sians and the ability to buy Russian aswell as American equipment. So thegovernment-to-government effort isnow proceeding in parallel with the lab-to-lab effort.

Funding levels are also on the rise.This year the lab-to-lab effort, includ-ing the work with the Russian navalstorage facilities, has 5 million dollarsin funding; the DOE-to-GAN programhas 10 million dollars; and the govern-ment-to-government MPC&A programfor the civilian institutes has 30 milliondollars. Moreover, DOE is asking foran increase in fiscal year 1997 and ishopeful that they’ll get it.

In terms of the program’s future,we're heading toward including all MI-NATOM facilities with inventories ofhighly enriched uranium and plutonium.That means, for example, dismantle-ment facilities as well as the naval stor-age facilities. With this experience andexpertise under our belts, the UnitedStates and Russia will be in a positionto provide leadership to the world inglobal management of nuclear material.

Sig Hecker: That’s truly exciting.The thing to remember about theMPC&A program is that it had to bedone. Whatever the Russians do lateron, if they themselves know where theirmaterials are, the world will havegained immeasurably.

Lab-to-Lab versus Government-to-Government

Joe Pilat: I want to raise an issuehere. In looking back at the early yearsof Nunn-Lugar MPC&A, we’ve implieda lot of criticism of the U.S. bureaucra-cy, but it would be wrong to create theimpression that the Russian bureaucra-cy, which includes representatives fromgovernment, MINATOM, and the Min-istry of Defense, wasn’t equally ormore responsible for the stalemate inthe government-to-government sphere.

Sig Hecker: Bureaucratic difficultiesnotwithstanding, I personally think thatNunn-Lugar was one of those visionarypieces of legislation. It provided theumbrella for us to do the lab-to-lab ef-fort in stabilizing both people and ma-terials. Otherwise, we would have beenaccused of making policy. The Nunn-Lugar program has proceeded in thefashion in which you make treaties—

very slowly and painfully arguing aboutevery single word. We were able totunnel underneath the bureaucracy anddo the direct lab-to-lab but still underthe auspices of the U.S. government.

Also, we thought the lab-to-lab sci-entific collaborations were a jump startand eventually would merge with ISTC.At first, the Russians at Arzamas-16preferred to deal with us on a one-to-one basis rather than to deal with usthrough this much larger bureaucracy,but now both avenues are working.Similarly, we always thought that ourprogram in materials control wouldeventually merge with the government-to-government program because we hadthe same people working on both, andas Ron just pointed out, that is comingto pass.

Paul White: The restrictions of thegovernment-to-government program—wherein no money could go to the Rus-

sians and everything must be done withU.S. people and materials—has nowbeen dropped, at least in principle. Inpractice, our government still has tolearn how to do this, but things havechanged. Since the start of the Nunn-Lugar program, over a million U.S. dol-lars have been authorized to be spentdirectly in the former Soviet Union.(This is in contrast, however, to thehundreds of millions spent on U.S.goods and services provided to the for-mer Soviet Union.) Also, working incollaboration with the Russians ratherthan imposing our will is now part ofthe program. The discussion we arehaving here has pointed out the impor-tance of the psychological aspect inmaking things work. The policy kindsof things have to be in place. But tolubricate the process, these personal in-teractions are very important.

Ron Augustson: It’s interesting that atthe meeting last week in Washington,Mikhailov and O’Leary signed a simpleone-page joint statement on MPC&Athat was not possible until very recent-ly. It listed six new facilities thatMikhailov is opening up to theMPC&A program, including Krasno-yarsk-26 and Sverdlosk-44, which arepart of the nuclear weapons complex,and four other facilities that are part ofthe government-to-government activi-ties. So the government-to-governmentand lab-to-lab programs are meshed to-gether in the one document.

Los Alamos Science: What progresshas been made in the government-to-government program

Paul White: Over one billion dollarshas been spent on the overall program.The vast majority of that money hasgone for demilitarization of delivery ve-hicles and filling up silos with concrete.And generally, the money was spent topurchase U.S. material for delivery toRussia.

Sig Hecker: An approach needed toget public support . . .



… I personally think that Nunn-Lugar was one of those visionarypieces of legislation.

It provided the umbrella for us to do the lab-to-labeffort in stabilizing bothpeople and materials. Otherwise we would have been accused of

making policy.

Paul White: Right. We may occa-sionally quibble about some of the dif-ficulties of working within the govern-ment-to-government framework, but itwould be wrong to underestimate thesignificant progress made by this moreformal aspect of our cooperative effortswith the Former Soviet Union.

We’ve already mentioned U.S. assis-tance to facilitate the destruction of thedelivery vehicles, including ICBMs,scheduled for elimination under theSTART I agreement. In many cases,the silos that held those missiles arebeing destroyed as well, with Secretaryof Defense Perry being on hand for onewell-publicized such event. Underagreements with Belarus, Ukraine, andKazakhstan, warheads stationed onthese territories have been, or are being,transported back to the Russian Federa-tion for dismantlement, and U.S.-pro-vided equipment has helped to ensurethat these transfers are accomplishedsafely. In partnerships between theDOD and the DOE labs, the UnitedStates has supplied flexible armoredblankets to shroud warheads duringtransportation. Accident responseequipment has been provided to ensureeffective assessment and remediation incase of any accident during such trans-fers. Rail cars used for such transfershave been upgraded with U.S. assis-tance, and containers for fissile materialare being supplied for shipment andstorage of the nuclear materials result-ing from the dismantlement of the war-heads themselves. With help from thisprogram, the Soviet nuclear arsenal hasbeen moving steadily on its course backto Russia. Kazakhstan has already re-turned all of its nuclear weapons, andBelarus and Ukraine are expected tobecome non-nuclear states by the endof 1996.

Right now, in one of the biggest ef-forts under the Nunn-Lugar program,the DOD is working productively withMINATOM on the design and con-struction of the large storage facilitythat Ron and Mark Mullen were in-volved in at the very beginning of theeffort in 1992. Los Alamos is continu-

ing its support of this effort with analy-sis of facility safety and the review ofthe Russian design for the facility’s nu-clear material protection, control andaccounting system.

We should also note that there aresome non-nuclear aspects of the Nunn-Lugar Program—for example, assis-tance is being provided to the RussianFederation in the demilitarization ofchemical and biological weapons. Fi-nally, we need to point out the impor-tance of the cooperative working rela-tionships that have developed betweenpersonnel of the Russian Ministry ofDefense and the U.S. Department ofDefense. Those relationships are atleast as significant to the reduction oftensions and the creation of a new, co-operative atmosphere between our twocountries as those between our nuclearlaboratories.

Successes and FutureProspects of the Lab-to Lab

Program

Los Alamos Science: What are thesuccesses of the lab-to-lab program interms of nonproliferation goals? Forexample, is scientific conversion work-ing, and is it a realistic goal?

Sig Hecker: We have contributed tothe stability of the scientists at the nu-clear weapons institutes and to their in-volvement in non-military projects.But did we convert them? I don’t nec-essarily think so, nor is this a realisticgoal. If we didn’t have the nuclear ma-terials MPC&A project, then I wouldsay it would be way too early to judgethe ultimate effect of this lab-to-lab ef-fort. On the other hand, I believe thematerials control effort is a real contri-bution to nonproliferation objectives. Itrepresents a quantum jump in the over-all world security because the real issueis nuclear weapons proliferation Wewould have liked to have started earlier,but the double fences around Arzamas-16 and many of the other nuclear instal-lations are still pretty impressive. So Ithink we might have gotten through thiswindow of opportunity just in the nickof time.

The danger of losing the scientists toIraq or Iran has always seemed quitesmall to me because those folks are pa-triots. Given the way they grew up inthose closed towns, they’re not likely togo live in Iraq. But in a very short pe-riod of time that could change becausethey won’t have to leave their countryto design a bomb for a rogue nation. Itwill require only a few scientistshooked up through the Internet to theleader of that nation. Then the serious-ness of the threat increases significant-ly. But for the time being, I thinkwe’ve made some contribution throughscientific conversion as well.

Joe Pilat: I would share Sig’s impres-sions on the nonproliferation benefits ofthe lab-to-lab programs. But there’sone element that I would like to ex-



… right now we’re plugging our fingers

in a dike. The question is whether we’ll be ultimately

successful in helping the Russians and others

from the former Soviet Union to safeguardtheir nuclear materials.

Joe Pilat

plore. I think we’ve done the rightthings in the lab-to-lab MPC&A, butright now we’re plugging our fingers ina dike. The question is whether we’llbe ultimately successful in helping theRussians and others from the formerSoviet Union to safeguard their nuclearmaterials. The extent of the Russianpolitical drift to the left (or right), thefunding from the Russians themselvesthat is ultimately needed to make mate-rials control successful and operationalover the years, and whether, in fact, wecan continue to push the process inRussia are all open issues or questions.We’ve done as well as we can at thisstage, but it’s still too soon to tell howthese unprecedented experiments in co-operation will pan out.

Sig Hecker: Let me just add to Joe’sconcern. Whatever we do to secure nu-clear materials, we are still going to befaced with the fact that the material isthere. And so future political upheavalscould result in the wrong people gettingtheir hands on this material and using itfor aggressive or terrorist purposes. So

we’re really not done. And that’s whyI drew up what I call a plutonium roadmap. The road map outlines some pos-sible ways to get to an end state inwhich there is significantly lessweapons-grade nuclear material in theworld. And the ways to reach that statecan be productive in the sense that theyextract a good amount of the energyfrom the nuclear material as it is beingtransformed. Only when we reach thatend state can we rest easier. We’retalking about a very long-term, maybe a100-year, problem. And if we let up atany point along the way, we will havestill opened the flood gates.

Paul White: This long-term problemof how to deal with nuclear materials isanother area where we are having veryconstructive engagement with the Rus-sians through official government chan-nels. For example, there is a JointU.S.-Russian Steering Committee onPlutonium Disposition. Several techni-cal working-groups under this commit-tee are cooperatively examining a vari-ety of methods for long-term materialdisposition.

Sig Hecker: On the front page of theNew York Times a couple of years ago,there was a picture of Mikhailov andO’Leary, and O’Leary is quoted as say-ing that plutonium is not only a securityliability but also an economic liability.And Mikhailov says plutonium is formy children, which is exactly the viewthat the Russians have. And that’s oneof the reasons that my vision for thelong-term plutonium road map includesthe importance of international collabo-rations. I doubt that our governmentwill bury our plutonium if the Russianskeep theirs above ground. There’s justno way.

Paul White: I would definitely agreethat the aspect of nonproliferation thatdeals with the nuclear materials ques-tion is far more important than scienceconversion. On the other hand, Arza-mas-16, and Chelyabinsk-70 were, byand large, single-purpose laboratories,

whereas Los Alamos and Livermorewere multi-program laboratories en-gaged in issues of nonproliferation, ma-terials control, and other scientific ap-

plications. Now, through the lab-to-labeffort, Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70are very actively engaged in supportingMPC&A technology in their countryand are also actively looking for waysin which they can apply their knowl-edge of radiation detectors and materi-als analysis to other problems of non-proliferation. They are branching outand finding activities other than just thedesign and manufacture of nuclear war-heads, and so MPC&A is actually play-ing a role in science conversion.

John Shaner: And all these scientificconversion activities increase theirprospects for getting a broader supportbase within their own government. Ul-timately, the U.S. government is notgoing to underwrite the whole Russiannuclear weapons complex. The conver-sion activities are providing work that’snot directly related to weapons of mass



We’ve certainly started the process of integratingtheir laboratories into the

world-wide scientific community.

We believe that stabilizingthe institutes, although it’s a debated topic in

Washington, has to be agood thing.

John Shaner

Irv Lindemuth

destruction. It also gives a chance for alittle bit of stability while the economyhas a chance to recover.

Los Alamos Science: Is there a hopethat the nuclear institutes will becomeintegrated into the larger scientificcommunity?

Irv Lindemuth: Yes. We’ve certainlystarted the process of integrating theirlaboratories into theworld-wide scientificcommunity. I’ve al-ways felt that the bestthing that we couldhope for with Arza-mas-16 is that some-how they evolve into alaboratory somethinglike ours.

Joe Pilat: Clearly, wedon’t want to see acatastrophic collapseleading to a braindrain and the like, butwe need to be carefulhere. Many people inour country would saythat the maintenanceof healthy nuclearweapons labs in Rus-sia is not necessarily in the U.S. inter-ests. On the other hand, the goal ofscientific conversion or integration iscertainly in our interests.

John Shaner: The point is that stabi-lizing the materials through MPC&Awon’t do the whole job. We need tostabilize people as well. That’s goingto require making their economic situa-tion good enough that this very smallminority of people who know about nu-clear weapons are not driven to desper-ation. We believe that stabilizing theinstitutes, although it’s a debated topicin Washington, has to be a good thing.As long as they have nuclear weaponsto worry about and nuclear materials toworry about, we think it would be real-ly foolish to get rid of all the peoplethat know how to worry about them.

So, in the long term, MPC&A is onepart of it, but we need to continue tolook for other ways of stabilizing thesituation.

One avenue is the Industrial Partner-ship Program, which is a wonderfulprogram with an end game to accelerateRussian entry into an international eco-nomic regime. At first it ran into prob-lems in Washington because it involvedboth foreign countries and private in-

dustry. Now that has turned around.We need a long-term consistent policyof continuing to accelerate the engage-ment of the Russians into a world econ-omy. If we have difficulties with thatidea, we raise the risk that people couldbe driven by desperation to do unpoliti-cal, unpatriotic things.

Sometimes we’ve been criticizedwhen the MC&A program has giventhe Russians equipment and systems tocontrol and keep track of these thingseven though they do not allow us to in-stall them ourselves. Some say thatmeans the program is a failure andshould be cut off. On the other hand, ifyou watch the enthusiasm of the direc-tor of that facility grow as he sees theseMC&A systems installed, it gives you awarmer feeling than if you never got totalk to him at all.

Los Alamos Science: Are the employ-ees of the nuclear institutes subject toblack market temptations?

John Shaner: I think they are subject.Although there is no questioning thepatriotism of our Russian colleagues,catastrophic economic conditions canmake anything possible.

Krik Krikorian: There’s always thehundredth of one percent of people, andit doesn’t take verymany to mess up asystem. But therehas not been a uni-versal threat fromthat so far.

Joe Pilat: I thinkKrik’s right. It’sjust like the braindrain. That threatwas initially exag-gerated and the theftscenarios are alsoexaggerated. Thereis a concern, thereare problems thatneed to be resolved.And John gave anexcellent overview

of what we can do to help, but ulti-mately the Russians have to resolvetheir own problems.

Irv Lindemuth: Do you see othercountries trying to foster a long-termrelationship with the Russians?

John Shaner: Arzamas-16 is workingwith France and Germany on a numberof science and technology projects.They are certainly developing short-term relationships. I know that indus-trial firms trying to work in Russia areindeed taking a long view of this issueof integrating Russia into the worldeconomy, both for what they can con-tribute and for the potential marketdown stream.

Joe Pilat: All the nuclear-weapons-



states’ laboratories and institutes arevery interested in how they could diver-sify their portfolios. And the soonerwe can look carefully at those issuesand try to find a means of addressingthem broadly, the better off we will be.

Sig Hecker: In a sense the lab-to-labprogram has been a means to jump startthis process of conversion from workon weapons of mass destruction towork on projects that are not weapons-related.

Los Alamos Science:

Is Los Alamostrying to use the lab-to-lab approach topromote nonproliferation in other partsof the world?

John Shaner: China obviously is an-other player in this nuclear future. Inour little way, we are trying to lay thegroundwork for a small group of peopleto establish technical respect and trustat their nuclear institutes. From therewe would hope to build a growing rela-tionship and take advantage of opportu-nities like we did in the case of nuclearmaterial control in Russia. But it’s amuch more complicated phenomenonwhen you start adding more and morecountries to the playing field and you’renot exactly sure where they’re headed.

Los Alamos Science: What effect willa more conservative Russian regimehave on the lab-to-lab efforts?

John Shaner: These efforts are soclearly in the interest of both sides thatI’m confident that even a more conserv-ative regime will look relatively favor-ably on it. The material control pro-gram has started to engage the mostsensitive nuclear institutes, but that en-gagement is very controlled, and itcould probably be made acceptableeven to a very conservative regime.

Ron Augustson: I would hope that thescientific conversion activities wouldalso continue. They provide a verynecessary foundation and they engagethe academicians and the really top-

notch scientists who don’t have muchinterest in MPC&A as a technical topicbut are interested in ultra-high magneticfields and topics like that. And in turn,those people are listened to by peoplewithin the government.

Krik Krikorian: One of the funda-mental problems is that Russian scienceand funding for Russian science are de-clining. For instance, the number ofpeople employed by MINATOM hasgone from roughly a million down to800,000 or 700,000. That’s a severechange. Their science is so big thatthey really can’t afford it all. MI-NATOM has one empire, the RussianAcademy is another empire. And guyslike Velikhov have wangled their insti-tutes away from both.

Joe Pilat: I would share John’s assess-ment that the likely political path inRussia is a continued drift to authoritar-ianism, and that the MPC&A activitiesshould survive that drift. Scientific col-laborations, so long as they’re not tooclose to sensitive areas, also have a de-cent chance of survival, in part becausethey represent a source of funds.

The areas that concern me most arethe more far reaching, especially theprospect of major collaborative effortsin dismantlement and further arms con-trol. A continued drift to the left (orright) is going to create a climate morehostile to those activities. In terms ofthe issues we’re interested in, there is asignificant minority in Russia that hasviewed as treasonous all of the armscontrol and collaborative activities withthe United States since the time of She-vardnadze (former Soviet foreign minis-ter, and now president of Georgia) andGorbachev.

Nevertheless, we are likely to seesome level of cooperation. Even duringthe Cold War, we had some shared ob-jectives, so there is no reason weshouldn’t have them now. I think it isof particular interest that the Laboratoryhas been able to supplement, comple-ment, and push a relatively well-definedgovernment-to-government agenda

through the lab-to-lab programs that weare discussing today. But we will haveto see how the new political situationcreated by the Duma elections affectsboth the lab-to-lab efforts and thebroader government efforts that theyserve and on which they are based.

Steve Younger: We should not be surprised if there are some problemsalong the way. Don’t forget that get-ting the first contract signed, doing thefirst scientific experiment, and gettingthe MPC&A program going were allvery challenging at the times that wedid them. Now we want to work to-gether on improving the security of realweapons material. Despite the prob-lems, I am encouraged by the determi-nation on both sides to get this impor-tant job done. If we and the Russiansdon’t do it, who will?

Sig Hecker: Thank you all for partici-pating in this round table and sharingyour views on how our collaborationswith the Russians began. The viewspresented tell the story from a LosAlamos point of view. Today, fiveother Department of Energy laborato-ries are contributing to efforts designedto help Russia control its nuclear mate-rials. It would also be very interestingto hear the Russian version of thisstory. Since all along we have workedside-by-side as equals, maybe we’llhear their story some day.

I can’t predict which way Russianpolitics will turn in the future, but I will sleep better knowing that they arein greater control of their nuclear mate-rials today than they were just twoyears ago. This dialogue recounts astory that is a testament to what can beaccomplished when scientists and engi-neers are encouraged by a courageousgovernment official, Charles Curtis in this case, to help solve a crucial international problem.

■





Sig Hecker is the Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a position hehas held since 1986. He joined the Laboratory as a technical staff member in thePhysical Metallurgy Group and has served as Chairman of the Center for Materi-als Science and as Division Leader of the Materials Science and Technology Di-vision prior to becoming Director. Sig began his professional career as a seniorresearch metallurgist with the General Motors Research Laboratories in 1970 aftertwo years as a postdoctoral appointee at Los Alamos.

Steve Younger is the Director of the Los Alamos Center for International Securi-ty Affairs (CISA) and is responsible for overseeing Los Alamos interactions inRussia, China, and elsewhere. In 1992, he organized the first scientific collabora-tion between the U.S. and Russian nuclear laboratories and has participated inmany joint experiments involving our counterpart institute at Arzamas-16. Previ-ously, Steve was Deputy Program Director for Nuclear Weapons Technology. Hemaintains an active research interest in atomic and molecular physics and has ex-tensively published in these fields.

John Shaner is a Laboratory and American Physical Society Fellow and has been the Deputy Director of CISA since its inception. His responsibilities include oversight of active programs involving Los Alamos and sensitive technical institutions in sensitive countries. John is currently involved in jointprojects with institutions in the republics of the Former Soviet Union, and has responsibility for developing a lab-to-lab program with the institutes of the ChinaAcademy of Engineering Physics, the agency responsible for the Chinese nuclearweapons. In 1993, John was the recipient of the E.O. Lawrence Award for National Security.

Max Fowler joined the Laboratory to organize a team to develop and apply ex-plosive-driven magnetic flux compression devices. Over the years, he and his col-leagues have used this technique to generate energy sources to power a number ofplasma-producing devices, lasers, imploding foils, electron-beam accelerators, andrail guns. This early work influenced subsequent megagauss solid state research,liner implosion of plasmas, and the initiation of the “Megagauss” Conferences.Max is a Laboratory Fellow and has recently been awarded an Honorary Doctor-ate from Novosibirsk State University for his work in high-energy density physicsand in furthering scientific relations between the United States and Russia.

Donald Eilers has served as a CORRTEX technical expert on the U.S. delegationto the bilateral Nuclear Testing Talks whose goal was improving verification ofthe Threshold Test Ban Treaty. He held the position of U.S. Scientific TeamLeader on both the U.S. Kearsarge and the Soviet Shagan Joint Verification Ex-periments whose sets of experiments successfully demonstrated the CORRTEXverification technology at those nuclear test sites. Don had the distinction ofbeing among the first scientists to visit the Soviet nuclear weapons test site inSemipalatinsk and the nuclear design facility of Arzamas-16. Don received theLaboratory’s Distinguished Performance Award and the Department of Energy’sAward of Excellence.

Nerses (Krik) Krikorian currently is a Laboratory Fellow who began his careeras a physical chemist with the Manhattan Project. During his career, Krik wasDeputy Group Leader and Group Leader of the Critical Technologies Group ofthe International Technology Division. He has visited over fifteen Russian labo-ratories as well as the nuclear weapons design laboratories and several Chinesescientific laboratories Through Krik’s numerous publications on rare earth and

The Participants



refractory carbides, intermetallic phase relationships, thermodynamics, crystallog-raphy, and superconductivity, he has developed an international reputation inhigh-temperature chemistry.

Hugh Casey is the Project Leader for the New Independent States Industrial Part-nering Program (IPP), located in CISA. In his current assignment, he is theChairman of the IPP Inter-Laboratory Advisory Board (ILAB), representing theten DOE multi-program laboratories responsible for implementing the cooperativeprojects with the weapons institutes in the former Soviet Union. Hugh's technicalexpertise and interests include joining, net shape processing,rapid solidification processing, advanced materials, and applica-tions of modeling of materials synthesis and processing.

Irv Lindemuth is currently Project Leader for International Col-laboration in Pulsed Power Applications with responsibility forproviding technical leadership for the pulsed-power/magnetized-target fusion collaboration between Los Alamos and its Russiancounterpart, the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Ex-perimental Physics (VNIIEF), located at Arzamas-16 (Sarov).His areas of expertise include thermonuclear fusion, advancednumerical methods for the computer simulation of fusion plas-mas, and related pulsed-power technology. He received the Dis-tinguished Performance Award in 1992 for his work in the formative stages of theLANL/VNIIEF collaboration.

Paul White is a member of CISA where he has been applying his experience tothe development of technical collaborations between the U.S. and Russian nuclearweapons laboratories. Paul has long been interested in issues at the intersectionof technology and national security policy and was, for several years, Deputy Di-rector and later Acting Director of the Center for National Security Studies. Paulwas involved as a technical expert on the U.S. delegation to the Nuclear TestingTalks in Geneva .

Ronald H. Augustson isthe Project Leader for theUS-Russian Lab-to-LabNuclear Material Protec-tion, Control, and Ac-counting (MPC&A) Pro-gram at the Laboratory.Ron is a member of theLab-to-Lab SteeringGroup. His duties in-clude oversight of theLANL technical supportactivities to the program, establishment of strong working relationships with ourRussian collaborators, and providing program support to the steering group.

Joseph Pilat is a member of the Nonproliferation and International Security Divi-sion with the Laboratory. His work has included special advisor to the Depart-ment of Energy’s representative at the Third Review Conference of the NuclearNon-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and advisor to the U.S. Delegation at the 1995NPT Review and Extension Conference. Joseph also served as representative ofthe Secretary of Defense on the Fourth NPT Conference. ■

The two cities of Arzamas-16 andLos Alamos are situated on op-posite sides of the globe, sepa-

rated by ten time zones, and once sepa-rated by Cold War secrecy and politics.Each is a nuclearweapons research cityand the birthplace ofits country's atomicbomb. Moreover,each began its exis-tence as a secret city.As the people ofArzamas-16 and LosAlamos came to knoweach other over thelast several years, the recognition ofsimilar histories, na-tional security mis-sions, and educational,family, and patrioticvalues led the twocommunities to reachout to each other andbegin to share a “sisterhood.”

Interactions be-tween Los Alamosand Arzamas-16 began with the lab-to-lab scientific collaborations betweentheir respective nuclear institutes. LosAlamos scientist Irv Lindemuth, whoparticipated in the lab-to-lab collabora-tions in pulsed power and high magnet-ic fields, has played a key role in theinteractions as messenger between thetwo communities.

The sister cities story begins with Lena Panevkina, AlexanderPavlovskii’s personal interpreter, whothought that the scientific interactionsbetween Arzamas-16 and Los Alamoscould be extended to include a culturalexchange. During a November 1992visit to Los Alamos, Panevkina raisedthe issue with Lindemuth, and that dis-cussion led to a series of letters ex-changed between government officials

of the two cities. In December of1993, Lindemuth made a presentationto the Los Alamos City Council thattold the history of Arzamas-16. He ex-plained the similarities between the two

cities to the Council and noted that thecommunity of Arzamas-16 sometimesjokingly refers to itself as “Los Arza-mas.” The council voted unanimouslyto invite Arzamas-16 to become a “sis-ter city” to Los Alamos (see “SisterCities International”).

Also in 1992, Lena Gerdova, an in-terpreter for Vladimir Chernyshev,started a pen-pal exchange betweenhigh school students in Arzamas-16 andLos Alamos. Through Lindemuth, Ger-dova arranged to visit Ann Eilert’stenth grade class at Los Alamos HighSchool. A number of the studentswrote pen-pal letters, and Gerdova re-turned to Russia with the letters in hersuitcase. Lindemuth came back fromArzamas-16 in March 1993 with thefirst replies. Additionally, in December

1993, some two-hundred Los Alamosstudents contributed artwork to a Bradbury-Science-Museum-sponsored“Friendship Book” on the theme ofpeaceful relations between the two na-

tions, a book that inJanuary 1994 was pre-sented to Arzamas-16Director Vladimir Belugin.

The pen-pals rela-tionship spread toGallup, NM when scientists from Arza-mas -16 came to NewMexico in November1993 for a joint experi-mental campaign inLos Alamos’ AnchoCanyon. During a sidetrip to the GrandCanyon, Jim Goforth,a member of thepulsed-power group,and his sister, MargeSpurlin, a high schoolteacher from Gallup,arranged for the visi-tors to be welcomed

into the homes of Gallup residents. That visit combined with Spurlin’s en-thusiasm led students in Gallup to jointhe letter-writing campaign.

Ultimately, the letter writing spreadthroughout the Los Alamos school sys-tem and to several schools in Arzamas-16. Several hundred students from bothsides of the Atlantic have participated.

Earlier that year,when the Los Alam-os pulsed-power group was in Arza-mas-16 for the first joint scientific ex-periment, they were taken to visit thelocal hospital. There, they learnedfrom Dr. Valentina Ponomaryova, thedirector of the childhood and maternitycenter, that essential medical supplies


44


Los Alamos and Arzamas-16:the “Sister Cities” Relationship

In February 1995, the administration of Arzamas-16 presented the Los Alamos

City Council with a traditional Russian-cast brass bell. Left to right: Bob

Reinovsky, County Council Chairman Lawry Mann, and Irv Lindemuth admire

its workmanship.

We would like to thank the Los Alamos Monitor for al-lowing us to use information from articles written bySteve Shankland and Chairman Schaller.

were available in Russia but werepriced beyond the reach of the citizensof Arzamas-16, who were regularlygoing unpaid as the Russian govern-ment struggled financially.

When the Los Alamos scientists re-turned home and reported what theyhad seen, the Los Alamos communityexpressed a desire to help. Upon theadvice from the U.S. Embassy inMoscow that cash donations to theArzamas-16 hospital would be the mostexpedient and effective way to help,Lindemuth and John Eilert of the Labo-ratory’s Environmental Safety andHealth Group opened a bank account inDecember 1993 to launch the Arzamas-16 Children’s Medical fund. Donationsfrom Los Alamos, the surroundingcommunities, and even from Coloradoand Pennsylvania began to arrive.When Arzamas-16 Director VladimirBelugin visited Los Alamos in January1994, he was given more than six hun-dred dollars to take to Dr. Ponomaryo-va. Later, Cari Zocco took over asChairwoman of the Medical Fund, and over the years, additional cash donations have been forwarded to Dr.Ponomaryova.

Soon thereafter, Ken Bower, a mem-ber of the Laboratory’s Community In-volvement and Outreach Office, andthen Treasurer of the American Chemi-cal Society Central New Mexico Chap-ter, told Lindemuth that his Chapter hadaccumulated a cash surplus and wouldlike to distribute the money in Russia.Lindemuth and Bower first located acharitable medical organization (MAPInternational) that had access to surplusmedical supplies and then a U.S.-State-Department-supported shipping organi-zation that would ship to Russia at nocost to the donor. Bower leveraged tenthousand dollars in Medical Funds andAmerican Chemical Society fund dona-tions into a twenty-foot shipping con-tainer full of medical supplies that ar-

rived in Arzamas-16 in early 1995. Themedical supplies had a U.S. wholesalevalue of five-hundred thousand dollars.

The sister cities relationship was con-summated in May 1994 with the visit toLos Alamos by eight students and twoteachers from Arzamas-16 and their par-ticipation in the first New Mexico HighSchool Critical Issues Forum, a seriessponsored by the Laboratory's ScienceEducation and Outreach Group. The

topic of the first forum was to be nu-clear dismantlement; the format wouldinvolve teams of students from NewMexico high schools researching dis-mantlement and then developing pro-posed policies for U.S. assistance toRussia. When Lindemuth heard aboutthe forum he called Judith Kaye, leaderof the Outreach group, who agreed thatRussian students could participate.Frantic phone calls to Arzamas-16 and



“The idea of sister-city relationships is one of “people-to-people,” of citizen diplomacy “from heart-to-heart.” Only in this way will the ice left from the cold war be melted.…We would like to believe that if all Americans are like the “citizens” that visited Arzamas-16, then you and I will not perish on this fragile planet.” From a report in the Arzamas-16 Courier covering the May 1995 visit of the Los Alamos civic delegation.

Above: Russian students and teachers from Arzamas-16 at

the athletic field of Los Alamos high school n October 1995.

Right: Los Alamos students Tony Maggiore and Chih-Cheng

Peng open pen-pal letters from fellow students in Arzamas-16.

Bottom: Bob Reinovsky (left) greets Russian high school

teacher during visit to Arzamas-16.

hours of paper-work on the partof the Russiansproduced twoteams of Arza-mas-16 stu-

dents to present their ideas on the dis-mantlement issue. The combined planof the participating teams produced theclever acronym “TRUST, ”The Russian-United States Transition. After theforum, the plan was presented to U.S.Department of State personnel Joe De-thomas and Ann Harrington in Wash-ington, D.C. Some pen-pals were able

to meet face-to-face during this visit.In February 1995, two gifts were

presented to Bob Reinovsky and Linde-muth by Gennadi Karatayev, the Arza-mas-16 City Administrator. A castbronze bell and an invitation for a LosAlamos civic delegation to visit Arza-mas-16 to participate in the May 9 Vic-tory Day celebration commemoratingthe end of World War II in Europe. Aseven-member delegation accepted theinvitation and became the first U.S.civic visitors permitted into Arzamas-16by the Russian government. Amongthe delegation was Steve Shankland of


Sister Cities International

Sister Cities International is a national, non-profit, volunteer-membership or-ganization joining United States and foreign communities. Sister city affilia-

tions lead the national movement for volunteer participa-tion and community development in the internationalarena.

The Sister City Program began shortly after World War IIand developed into a national initiative when PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower proposed the people-to-peopleprogram at a White House Conference in 1956. Hehoped that involving citizens internationally might lessenthe chance of future world conflicts. Initially groupedwith the National League of Cities, Sister Cities Interna-tional became a separate, not-for-profit organization in1967. The procedure for establishing an official SisterCity affiliation requires that an agreement be signed bythe respective mayor of each city and ratified by eachcity council, or its equivalent.

Membership in Sister Cities International is designed to improvethe cultural understanding of people of different nations as wellas provide new prospects for trade and business. Student andprofessional exchanges and other learning experiences inschools may be initiated through direct inter-school contracts.Membership in Sister Cities International provides eligibility forvarious grant programs.

Sister Cities International represents 125 million Americansin 1,200 U.S. cities and their 1,900 partners in 120 coun-tries worldwide. Since 1986, partnerships between U.S.cities and those in the Former Soviet Union have grownfrom six to one hundred and fifty-two. Today, partnershipswith Japanese and German cities represent the largestnumber of sister-city affiliations by country.

Like Los Alamos, modern Arzamas-16

(upper photo) is situated in a region of

great natural beauty. The Sarovka and

Satis Rivers flow into the Volga River

separating the city into distinct sections.


the Los Alamos Monitor, the first non-Russian media representative ever per-mitted into the city.

The May 1995 visit to Arzamas-16set the stage for an October visit to LosAlamos by a 15-member Arzamas-16delegation. In January of this year, LosAlamos Middle School teacher JeanneAllen was notified that she had beenawarded a twenty-nine thousand dollarthematic exchange grant from SisterCities International. Through thisgrant, five students and a teacher fromLos Alamos and San Ildefonso Pueblowill visit Arzamas-16, and five Arza-mas-16 students and a teacher willcome to Los Alamos. The students willresearch water-quality issues, usingNew Mexico’s Rio Grande and tribu-taries of Russia’s Moksha River. TheLaboratory will participate in this pro-ject by providing tours, lectures, andanalytical assistance.

From the beginning of their modernexistence, the people of Los Alamosand Arzamas-16 have been committedto the security of their respective na-tions. When the changing global politi-cal climate made it possible to work to-gether to reduce the nuclear danger, thetwo cities embraced the opportunity.

■


Arzamas-16 Changes Name

A formal request by the people of Arzamas-16 in August 1995 led BorisYeltsin to officially change the name of the city back to its historic name of Sarov.

Originally a provincial center, the town was the site of the Sarovamonastery next to the Sarovka River. Before the Communist revolution,thousands of Russians, including the czar, made pilgrimages to the site tobenefit from the pure water of the Sarovka River. The water is said tohave healing powers andis a marketable commodityof the city today. In 1923,the monastery was closedby the communists andmany priests were execut-ed. Many of the buildings,including a spectacularcathedral, were destroyed,and the remaining build-ings were converted tosecular use. The high belltower visible from much ofthe city stands as a monu-ment to the earlier times.

The city disappeared fromunclassified maps in 1946,the same year the All-Russian Scientific Re-search Institute of Experi-mental Physics, the weapons design facility, was built. The village wasthen given status as a city and, over the years, labeled with a series ofclassified code names. In 1990, the Soviet government first acknowl-edged the city’s existence openly. Most in Sarov support the namechange, but others feel that Arzamas-16 more correctly reflects the city’sgreatest achievements–nuclear weapons.

The city of Sarov remains a “closed” city with entrances and exits carefullymonitored by armed guards at the periphery. Mr. Gennadi Karatayev, the

City Administrator, recognizes that considerable timeand money will be required to separate the necessarilyclassified technical areas from the remainder of the In-stitute and from the community. Nevertheless,Karatayev has expressed the hope that within tenyears his city and much of the Institute will be “open,”not unlike Los Alamos. Once again, members of theRussian Orthodox Church may now make pilgrimagesto the sacred shrines of St. Serafim, the monastery’smost famous resident.

The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox

Church visits the monastery of St. Ser-

afim. Academician Yuli Khariton, the

“Soviet Oppenheimer,” is on the right.


“SIDE-BY-SIDE AS EQUALS”

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