"Side-By-Side As Equals"-An Unprecedented Collaboration Between Therussian and American Nuclear Weapons Laboratories To
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“SIDE-BY-SIDE AS EQUALS” 2 Los Alamos Science Number 24 1996 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) Number 24 1996 Los Alamos Science 1 “Side-by-Side as Equals”—a round table emories tend to be short Lugar program was extended to pro- in this rapidly changing mote stabilization of defense personnel world. It has been only and, where possible, their conversion to Mfour years since the So- civilian activities. This visionary gov- viet Union collapsed and separated ernment initiative under DoD leader- into independent states. Yet the ship has made significant progress in U.S.-Soviet superpower struggle and the destruction of delivery systems and the threat of all-out nuclear war are missile silos slated for elimination under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I. However, efforts aimed at stabilizing the people and fa- cilities of the Russian nuclear complex and safeguarding the associated nuclear materials initially proved to be difficult. In the context of these highly visible efforts, another smaller and quieter ef- fort was proceeding steadily and with remarkable success. Nuclear weapons scientists from Los Alamos and from Arzamas-16 (the birthplace of the Sovi- et atomic bomb, now called Sarov) began working together on basic sci- ence projects almost immediately after the Cold War ended, and the mutual trust and respect gained through that lab-to-lab scientific effort has become a The photo shows the Directors of Los already matters for historical studies. springboard for a larger lab-to-lab effort Alamos National Laboratory and Nuclear weapons stockpiles are being in nuclear materials control throughout Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reduced, and the end of the Cold War the Russian nuclear complex. being greeted in February 1992 at the has enhanced global security. Never- What were the seeds for this un- airport of the once secret atomic city of theless, the collapse of the Soviet precedented collaboration, and how did Arzamas-16 by leaders of VNIIEF, the All Union brought forward new dangers, it get official approval? How did it Russian (formerly All Union) Research primary among them being the ulti- grow into the larger effort in nonprolif- Institute of Experimental Physics where mate fate of the old Soviet nuclear ar- eration? How are these lab-to-lab ef- the first Soviet atomic bomb was built. senal and the increased threat of nu- forts affecting the government-to-gov- Front row left to right: Viktor Ivanov, clear proliferation. ernment efforts started under Los Alamos Director Sig Hecker, VNIIEF The United States was able to act Nunn-Lugar, and what are the prospects Director Vladimir Belugin, Livermore Di- quickly: To support agreements by for furthering nonproliferation goals in rector John Nuckolls, VNIIEF Bush and Gorbachev during the fall of the future? Scientific Director Yuli Khariton, and 1991 that their respective countries We asked Laboratory Director Sig Academician Alexander Pavlovskii. would dismantle a large part of the ar- Hecker and other Los Alamos staff in- senals of the Cold War, Congress volved in the lab-to-lab effort to ad- passed legislation to help the Soviet dress those questions. Their experi- Previous two pages: In the fore- Union destroy nuclear, chemical, and ences of interacting with the Russian ground, Director Sig Hecker has dis- other weapons and establish safeguards nuclear scientists through the remark- embarked at the Arzamas-16 airport against proliferation. Department of able changes of the last decade bear and is about to shake hands with Yuli Defense (DoD) funds amounting to testimony to the power of personal ties Khariton, the Soviet“Oppenheimer.” 400 million dollars per year were redi- and trust in the pursuit of shared inter- Shown in the background on the left rected into the so-called “Nunn-Lugar” ests. These interactions may reflect the page is the monastery at Arzamas-16 program (named after Senators Sam universal values of the scientific com- and on the right page, Los Alamos Nunn and Richard Lugar who initiated munity and presage the realization of National Laboratory . the legislation). After the Soviet col- the long-held belief that those values lapse in December 1991 and in subse- are a key to resolving the most difficult quent years, the scope of the Nunn- global problems. 2 Los Alamos Science Number 24 1996 “Side-by-Side as Equals”—a round table Part I Roots of the Lab-to-Lab Collaboration The Scientific Roots of and Rurik Trunin from Arzamas-16, the high magnetic fields. Their interaction the Collaboration Russian counterpart to Los Alamos, and provided the initial basis of trust for try- Evgenii Avrorin from Chelyabinsk-70, ing to initiate a lab-to-lab collaboration, Sig Hecker: Many people have ex- the Russian counterpart to Livermore, and their mutual interest, and that of pressed surprise when I tell them of the their junior colleagues, led directly to joint work with our Russian counter- the work in pulsed power that forms the parts from the atomic city of Arzamas- bulk of lab-to-lab scientific interactions 16. The fact that we are working not with the nuclear scientists of Arzamas- only on peacetime science projects but 16. Max, when did it all start? also on the sensitive issues of nuclear materials control strikes them as even Max Fowler: I first heard of Alexan- more surprising. I always emphasize der Pavlovskii in 1965 in connection that much of our success is due to the with Megagauss-I, the first international trust and personal friendship that we conference on using high explosives have been able to develop with the and magnetic-flux compression to cre- Russian nuclear scientists. ate ultra-high magnetic fields. At Los Here we’d like to tell the story of Alamos, we were interested in using how that happened, and to my mind, it this pulsed-power source to initiate con- starts about ten years ago and has two trolled fusion. The Soviet interest was main threads: One is the work associ- presumably identical. Pavlovskii was ated with the Joint Verification Experi- an author on four of eight Soviet ab- ments, an arms control effort that en- stracts submitted to Megagauss-I. We gaged our nuclear weapons testing were looking forward to meeting him, experts with their Soviet counterparts in but none of those authors were permit- a very close technical working relation- ted to attend the conference. Supposed- ship for over two years, and the other is Sig Hecker ly they were from the Kurchatov Insti- the very significant personal interac- I always emphasize tute in Moscow, a civilian institute tions in pure science between people focussed on nuclear reactors. But at from our nuclear-weapons-design labs that much of our success that time, every Soviet nuclear scientist and their counterparts in the Soviet is due to the trust and had to say he was from Kurchatov. Union. John Shaner and Max Fowler personal friendship that Not until Megagauss-V in 1989, when of Los Alamos, for example, have been relationships between the Soviet Union following developments in their fields we have been able to and the United States were thawing, did in the Soviet Union for more than thirty develop with the Russian we learn that Pavlovskii and his col- years. I’ll ask John to begin describing leagues in pulsed power were from a those early years. nuclear scientists. secret city, now known to be Arzamas- 16. Sakharov called it “the Installa- John Shaner: As early as the late tion” in his autobiography, and of 1950s, Soviets at the nuclear weapons did not occur until the 1980s, when course, it is the Soviet nuclear weapons institutes were publishing seminal pa- they finally happened, it was like meet- design center where their first atomic pers in the open literature in my area of ing old colleagues. and hydrogen bombs were made. expertise, which is shock-wave and high-pressure physics. Through the Sig Hecker: A particularly important John Shaner: We should remind peo- 1960s, we got to know each other set of meetings were those between ple that Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk- through publications, we referenced Max Fowler and Academician Alexan- 70 were places that weren’t supposed to each other’s work, and since we were der Pavlovskii of Arzamas-16, one of exist and never appeared on any Soviet working on similar problems, we had a Andrei Sakharov’s students. Both Max maps until after the Cold War. pretty good idea of the quality of work and Pavlovskii were pioneers during the on both sides. Although personal con- 1960s in the field of explosively-driven Los Alamos Science: Max, when did tacts with people like Lev Al’tshuler pulsed power for the generation of ultra- you first meet Pavlovskii? Number 24 1996 Los Alamos Science 3 “Side-by-Side as Equals”—a round table Max Fowler: We had hopes of meet- of fusion. The Soviets put quite a bit generator to see if it worked as well ing him, as well as Vladimir Cherny- of money into their effort, and in the as you said it did.” In fact, our copy shev, at the second Megagauss confer- early 1980s, the Air Force was so im- worked better than he described in the ence in Washington, D.C., in 1979. pressed with the reported performance literature in one sense and not as well Their papers were actually read at that of one of Pavlovskii’s high-energy gen- in another. And the one I was interest- meeting, but ed in was the one again they were that didn’t work quite not allowed to at- as well.