ABOUT THE TOPIC: The intellectual history of nuclear arms control has largely been written as a history of ideas, untethered from personal biography and social context. This paper reinterprets the early history of arms control thought by placing it within a community of disarmament advocates, located mainly in the Boston area, during the late 1950s. Arms control thought was not simply a functional response to external developments in Cold War politics or the technology of nuclear weapons. Local and contingent factors, too, shaped its history. In particular, the idea of "stability" was contested within the early arms control community. As opposed to the static stability of deterrence preferred by strategic analysts, Jerome Wiesner—a control systems engineer and cyberneticist by training, and a participant in the Boston disarmament group—proposed to stabilize and correct the arms race through comprehensive arms control systems and processes of long-term dynamic feedback.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Benjamin Wilson is a predoctoral fellow at CISAC for 2013-14, and a doctoral student in MIT's Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society. He is writing a dissertation on the history of the community of nuclear arms control experts in the United States during the Cold War. The dissertation examines the evolving relationships between arms control intellectuals, the state, and the wider nuclear disarmament movement in a variety of settings—university-based research and defense consulting, Congressional advising, and within private foundations and specialized non-governmental arms control organizations. He holds master's degrees in physics from Yale University and the University of Toronto, and a bachelor's degree in engineering from the University of Saskatchewan.
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Benjamin Wilson
MacArthur Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow, CISAC
Speaker
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford University
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cblacker@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Olivier Nomellini Professor Emeritus in International Studies at the School of Humanities and Sciences
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Coit Blacker is a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Olivier Nomellini Professor Emeritus in International Studies at the School of Humanities and Sciences, and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. He served as director of FSI from 2003 to 2012. From 2005 to 2011, he was co-chair of the International Initiative of the Stanford Challenge, and from 2004 to 2007, served as a member of the Development Committee of the university's Board of Trustees.
During the first Clinton administration, Blacker served as special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and senior director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council (NSC). At the NSC, he oversaw the implementation of U.S. policy toward Russia and the New Independent States, while also serving as principal staff assistant to the president and the National Security Advisor on matters relating to the former Soviet Union.
Following his government service, Blacker returned to Stanford to resume his research and teaching. From 1998 to 2003, he also co-directed the Aspen Institute's U.S.-Russia Dialogue, which brought together prominent U.S. and Russian specialists on foreign and defense policy for discussion and review of critical issues in the bilateral relationship. He was a study group member of the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century (the Hart-Rudman Commission) throughout the commission's tenure.
In 2001, Blacker was the recipient of the Laurence and Naomi Carpenter Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching at Stanford.
Blacker holds an honorary doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Far Eastern Studies for his work on U.S.-Russian relations. He is a graduate of Occidental College (A.B., Political Science) and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (M.A., M.A.L.D., and Ph.D).
Blacker's association with Stanford began in 1977, when he was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship by the Arms Control and Disarmament Program, the precursor to the Center for International Security and Cooperation at FSI.
Faculty member at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Faculty member at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
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Coit Blacker
Senior Fellow, FSI; Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies, School of Humanities and Sciences; CISAC Faculty Member
Commentator
Regional conflicts present their own set of unique challenges to the international community. These conflicts may be political, economic, environmental, or social in nature, but are deeply tied to a sense of place. These conflicts can only be resolved with multiple nations involved.
This research area includes issues as diverse as China-Taiwan military competition, nuclear nonproliferation on the Korean Peninsula and South Asia, and political instability in the Middle East and North Africa.
About the Topic: This presentation includes a review of significant trends in the development of nuclear energy in China, from the mid1980's until the present, and related future prospects. Among the subjects covered will be: nuclear technology development based on competition/cooperation between a giant state owned enterprise and an upstart commercial utility from the south; different development goals and technology development by the two corporations; the impact of Fukushima on nuclear energy developments in China; the current status of the Chinese nuclear energy system; future growth prospects considering a range of different challenges in the industry; and nuclear technology development prospects and intellectual property issues.
About the Speaker: Chaim Braun is a consulting professor at CISAC specializing in issues related to nuclear power economics and fuel supply, and nuclear nonproliferation. Braun pioneered the concept of proliferation rings dealing with the implications of the A.Q. Khan nuclear technology smuggling ring, the concept of the Energy Security Initiative (ESI), and the re-evaluation of nuclear fuel supply assurance measures, including nuclear fuel lease and take-back. Before joining CISAC, Braun worked as a member of Bechtel Power Corporation's Nuclear Management Group, and led studies on power plant performance and economics used to support maintenance services. Prior to that, Braun worked at United Engineers and Constructors (UE&C), EPRI and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).
The causes and consequences of nuclear proliferation have received a great deal of academic attention. However, nuclear weapons are rarely discussed in isolation in policy circles. Instead, nuclear weapons are relevant as part of a category of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that includes chemical and biological weapons (CBWs). Are the factors that drive CBWs proliferation similar to those that drive nuclear proliferation? What is the relationship between these weapons types? In this article, we explore whether nuclear weapons and CBWs serve as complements or substitutes. Using newly collected data on both CBWs pursuit and possession over time, we find that nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons generally function as complements at the pursuit stage. In addition, countries that acquire nuclear weapons become less interested in pursuing other types of WMDs and are even willing to give them up in some cases.
CISAC affiliate and former postdoctoral fellow, Francesca Giovannini, and SIPRI Arms Control Fellow, Amy J. Nelson, discuss whether the nonproliferation agenda still retains a Cold War mentality.
They argue that a large number of factors shape arms control and nonproliferation efforts, including domestic factors, bureaucratic history and dynamics, as well as organizational psychology. And regional agreements and security institutions play an important role in modernizing the global nonproliferation agenda.
Radiation detection technology might significantly enhance a nation state’s ability to detect and counter the threat of nuclear terrorism, but the technology is not a panacea for the nuclear terrorism problem. Because of limitations imposed by physics (and arguably even more serious and fundamental limits imposed by geometry), radiation detection systems may never be able to detect all nuclear threats in credible risk scenarios. Of course, it is highly unlikely that the problem of nuclear terrorism- like many societal problems we face today- has a simple technological solution, but technology can help. I will argue that the pursuit of an all technological solution has- paradoxically- limited the progress that has been made in developing effective systems for detecting nuclear threats. Using an investment metaphor: we in the US and most of the developed world have bet on “get rich quick” schemes with respect to radiation detection technologies and have eschewed a path of steady progress. I argue that the US- and others- should take a more straightforward model to funding radiation detection research and development and develop simple metrics to measure steady progress as opposed to our current policy of betting all on “transformational solutions” that would “solve the problem”.
About the speaker: Jim Lund is a Senior Manager at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA. Prior to arriving at Sandia in 1994, he worked at Radiation Monitoring Devices in Massachusetts for 12 years where he was the manager of the Advanced Radiation Detector Group and led a group developing radiation detectors for advanced medical diagnostics and imaging.
After arriving at Sandia as a Consultant, Lund became a Senior Member of the Technical Staff and eventually a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff before becoming a Manager in 2003. He is currently a Senior Manager of Security Systems Engineering- a group of five engineering and science departments at Sandia, Livermore.
Lund has a B.S. in Chemistry and Math from Salem State University and an M.S. in Applied Physics from the University of Massachusetts. He has written and coauthored many publications in the field of ionizing radiation detection, refereed for several journals, evaluated proposals for DOE, NSF, and NIH, and has been invited to present to several national advisory groups (NAS, JASON, DSB, etc.).
CISAC Conference Room
Jim Lund
Senior Manager, Security Systems Engineering, Sandia National Laboratories
Speaker
More than 450 nuclear tests were carried out by the Soviet Union in the isolated steppes of eastern Kazakhstan from 1949 to 1989. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russians pulled out and left the Kazakhs to their own devices – literally. Enough fissile material for a dozen or more nuclear weapons was left behind in mountain tunnels and bore holes, virtually unguarded and vulnerable to scavengers, rogue states or potential terrorists.
In a remarkable, yet closely held feat of collaboration between the United States, Russia and Kazakhstan, engineers and nuclear scientists from the three countries spent 15 years and $150 million to secure many of the tunnels and test areas at the sprawling Semipalatinsk Test Site. Siegfried S. Hecker, a senior fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation and professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, launched the project while director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He used his personal ties with Russian scientists to prod them into working with the Americans and Kazakhs after a visit to the test site in 1998 left him stunned by the lack of security and the presence of scavengers.
It was one of the greatest nuclear nonproliferation stories never told, until the White House and Pentagon revealed some details in 2012, which David Hoffman and Eben Harrell of Harvard’s Belfer Center made public over the weekend in an in-depth report: Plutonium Mountain. In October 2012, officials from Kazakhstan, Russia and the United States dedicated a monument that simply reads: The world has become safer.
Hecker – who teaches the popular Stanford class, “Technology and National Security” with former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry – answers questions about the extraordinary Semipalatinsk mission. He also talks about next steps to secure the site.
Q: Why were you concerned about plutonium or highly enriched uranium scattered around the former Soviet test site? Did you see it as more than just an environmental and health problem?
Hecker: The atmospheric nuclear explosions resulted in environmental contamination because everything is vaporized in such an explosion. However, I was familiar with additional experiments we Americans performed at our Nevada Test Site and, in fact, some in bore holes at Los Alamos which left these materials much more intact and easily attainable, thus presenting proliferation or terrorism concerns.
Q: Why did you suspect the Soviets of conducting similar tests?
Hecker: We knew the Soviets had at least as robust a nuclear test and experimentation program as we had. If Nevada became an independent country tomorrow, the way the Soviet site now belongs to Kazakhstan, I would be very concerned. Besides, we had kept a close eye on what was going on at Semipalatinsk during the Cold War. It turned out that we had good reason to be concerned.
Q: You were director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Why did you get personally involved in this project?
Hecker: The great thing about being at Los Alamos was that you have so many bright people around you who kept track of everything going on in the security world. It was our scientists who had been tracking the Soviets for decades who brought these issues to my attention. These problems involved more than science; they involved politics and diplomacy, and with those they needed help. They also needed someone who understood the problem and could get action in Washington.
Q: Was this the first time you got involved with the Russian nuclear complex?
Hecker: No, on Aug. 17, 1988, 25 years ago, I was sitting in the Nevada Test Site control room for the detonation of one of our nuclear devices. What was remarkable is that across from me was Viktor Mikhailov, leader of a Soviet scientific delegation and later minister of atomic energy. We were conducting an experiment to verify that the other side could adequately monitor the size of nuclear explosions. It was part of the Reagan-Gorbachev set of initiatives to end the Cold War and grew out of technical discussions on the sideline of meetings to negotiate verification measures for the Threshold Test Ban Treaty.
Q: How did this experience play a role in the Semipalatinsk project?
Hecker: We worked together with the Russian nuclear weapons scientists for the first time in Nevada and in a reciprocal nuclear test at Semipalatinsk on Sept. 14, 1988. These events began the essential process of building the personal trust necessary to work side by side to tackle problems like those at Semipalatinsk.
Q: You visited the Russian nuclear weapons labs in early 1992, right after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Did they tell you about the problems at Semipalatinsk then?
Hecker: No. They had fond memories of the nuclear testing days at Semipalatinsk. They thought it was tragic that Russia lost such an important asset to the now-independent country of Kazakhstan. They believed the real estate and its problems now belonged to Kazakhstan. The Russian government did not want to be stuck with a bill to clean up the test site and believed the highly publicized environmental issues were greatly overblown.
Q: But surely they must have known that there was a proliferation risk with all the plutonium and highly enriched uranium that was left behind from their tests?
Hecker: In the 1990s, the Russian nuclear weapons labs had bigger problems. They were worried about survival and how to pay their people. One has to put the Semipalatinsk issue in perspective. During one of my many visits to the Russian labs the scientists told me that they had not been paid for nearly six months. They also did not think that someone would look for nuclear materials in such a desolate place.
Q: How did you confirm your suspicions that the problems at Semipalatinsk were more than an environmental problem?
Hecker: We got some discomforting reports from Kazakh scientists that prompted us to investigate this issue further.
Q: How did you get involved with them?
Hecker: The U.S. government began a project in the early 1990s with the Kazakhs to close the testing tunnels and eliminate the nuclear testing infrastructure at Semipalatinsk under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program. That was the first major U.S.-Kazakh effort. We also involved the Kazakhs in an extension of programs we developed with the Russians on nuclear materials security. That brought Los Alamos and other Department of Energy laboratory scientists to the nuclear reactor on the Caspian Sea; to one in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s capital at that time; and to research reactors at the test site.
Q: Did Kazakh scientists who visited Los Alamos and confirm your worst fears?
Hecker: As part of the Nunn-Lugar program, the U.S. established what was called an International Science and Technology Center program with the Kazakhs to help scientists make the post-Cold War transition to civilian work. That program brought Kazakh scientists to work with my colleagues at Los Alamos. It was a January 1998 visit by Kairat Kadyrzhanov, director of the Kazakh Institute of Nuclear Physics, which confirmed my fears. He told me not only about finding radioactive hot spots on the test site, but also about not being able to control the metal scavengers digging up copper cables to sell. And he invited me to Semipalatinsk.
Q. What did you find during your April 1998 visit to Semipalatinsk?
Hecker: I was alarmed to find unmanned guard posts and virtually no security at the site. My Los Alamos colleagues and I became convinced that Semipalatinsk was not only a serious proliferation problem, but also an urgent one. The copper cable thieves were not nomads on camelback, but instead they employed industrial excavation machinery and left kilometers of deep trenches digging out everything they could sell. We were concerned that some of that copper cabling could lead to plutonium residues.
Rachel Maddow, on Hecker's work (please bear with us on the initial ad):
Q: How did you convince Washington and Moscow that we had a problem that needed to be addressed on a trilateral basis?
Hecker: Washington was easy. We briefed then-DOE Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller and Under Secretary Ernie Moniz. They were very supportive of our efforts. We also had a great advocate for our effort in Andy Weber in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Moscow was more difficult. The Ministry of Atomic Energy was reluctant to get involved.
Q: What persuaded them to take action?
Hecker: I traveled to Sarov, the Russian Los Alamos, and showed director Rady Ilkaev the photos I had taken at Semipalatinsk. I asked if he was sure that they didn’t leave anything of concern behind. He talked to Ministry of Atomic Energy officials that night and sent the scientists who conducted some of the most important experiments at the site to see me the next morning. The Russian scientists knew this was important and they convinced Moscow that we should work together to mitigate the risks at the test site.
Q: Why did you need the Russians if you had good relations with the Kazakh nuclear establishment and the test site was now under their jurisdiction?
Hecker: Semipalatinsk is huge, almost the size of New Jersey and five times as big as the Nevada Test Site, so we wouldn’t know all the places to look. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Besides, we would have little idea of how dangerous it was to dig around without knowing what we should expect to find. Only the Russians knew where to look and what to look for.
Q: Did the Russians scientist cooperate?
Hecker: The Russian scientists were terrific. Without their cooperation, none of this could have been done. Director Ilkaev cleared the way with Moscow. The two key scientists from Sarov, Dr. Yuri M. Styazhkin and Dr. Viktor S. Stepanyuk, felt it was their moral duty to help solve the problems they left behind. They spent the better part of the next 15 years working on this problem. Unfortunately, Dr. Styazhkin passed away and was not able to celebrate with us when we had a small gathering of scientists at the site last September, just before the official unveiling of the monument in October.
Q: What about the American side?
Hecker: The key technical person was my Los Alamos colleague, Dr. Philip Hemberger. He took over the daily scientific leadership and provided the trusted interface with the Russian scientists. He also spent a better part of the next decade, and his career, working on this problem. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) managed the project with oversight from Andy Weber in the Pentagon.
Q. What was physically done to secure the sites?
Hecker: One site required an enormous sarcophagus, at another huge metal vessels were filled with concrete and special materials, and some of the tunnels were filled with concrete. The entire region in question at the test site was equipped with video cameras, seismic sensors and drones feeding information back to a sophisticated control room.
Q: Why did the operation take so long?
Hecker: The test site is huge. The Soviets conducted nuclear tests and other experiments there for 40 years. It involved their two weapons laboratories and multiple defense agencies. They were in a hurry, especially in the early years, and likely did not keep complete records. And, some of the key people were no longer alive. There were three countries involved and a lot of bureaucracy and diplomatic tussles, but the personal trust between the scientists helped to overcome the logjams.
Q: Was the length of time not related to lack of cooperation from the Russian side since they were reluctant to get involved in the first place?
Hecker: Yes, there was reluctance, but some of it was quite justified. For example, they were concerned that if we start digging around in some of the suspected areas, but then pull out U.S. support, we would leave the area more dangerous than it was before because now we had shown the scavengers where to look. They wanted to move step by step – identify an area, take samples and analyze the risk, then remediate if necessary. Trust was built along the way and they continued to roll out one problem area after another.
The trust and personal relationships developed among the scientists in all three countries were crucial."
Q: Who paid for all of this?
Hecker: The Americans paid the entire bill. The project was managed by professionals from DTRA supported by Nunn-Lugar funds appropriated by the U.S. Congress.
Q: But why only American money?
Hecker: The Russians were in no position to pay at the beginning of the project, as 1998 was a year of financial meltdown for the Russian economy. If we waited for them to pay, the copper cable thieves may have beat us to the nuclear materials. Likewise, the Kazakhs did not have the financial means and they believed they were not responsible for creating the problem. On the other hand, the U.S. initiated the Nunn-Lugar program to reduce the nuclear risks we face from the proliferation of nuclear weapons or materials resulting from the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Washington, spanning three presidential administrations, was prepared and willing to pay. It was money well spent.
Hecker was astonished to find trenches where scavengers had dug up copper cables used in communications with the Semipalatinsk Test Site control room. Photo Credit: Siegfried Hecker
Q: Is the problem fully resolved now?
Hecker: No, it likely will never be. As the Russian scientist, Viktor Stepanyuk, wrote in one of his papers about the mission: “The `definitive reduction’ of proliferation risks … on the territory of the former STS (Semipalatinsk Test Site) can be realized only though comprehensive set of activities comprising physical protection, security, information and legal protection.” I believe it will require the attention of all three countries for a long time to come. During my visit to Semipalatinsk last September and in subsequent discussions, we agreed to hold a trilateral technical workshop early next year on the long-term future of Semipalatinsk.
Q: What were the secrets to success behind the Semipalatinsk Project?
Hecker: The Semipalatinsk project serves as a remarkable example of how scientists can work together and how their efforts should be reinforced by governments to address serious proliferation problems. The trust and personal relationships developed among the scientists in all three countries were crucial. American Nunn-Lugar funds were crucial and the effective project management by DTRA was essential as the project expanded.
Q: Do you see cooperation with the Russians as particularly important?
Hecker: Yes. The U.S. and Russia have special responsibilities to lead the world’s efforts in nuclear safety and security. They own the bulk of the world’s nuclear weapons, nuclear materials and nuclear facilities. The others pale in comparison. Semipalatinsk was only one example of how Russian and U.S. scientists cooperated to make the world safer. Russian and American scientists believe strongly that we have much more work to do. But the strained relations between Moscow and Washington are impeding our efforts. I hope the Semipalatinsk story reminds them that nuclear cooperation is in the interests of both sides.
Q: Finally, with success at Semipalatinsk, what keeps you awake at night now?
Hecker: Most certainly, the nuclear hotspots around the world, namely, North Korea; Iran and Israel in the Middle East; and Pakistan and India in South Asia. Of equal concern, however, is getting all countries to take nuclear safety and security seriously. They require constant vigilance – one is never done. There are no simple technical fixes. International cooperation at all levels is required to ensure that world-class nuclear safety and security is practiced at all nuclear sites around the globe
American, Russian and Kazakh scientists at the so-called Atomic Lake, the crater created by a nuclear test fired on Jan. 15, 1965. Photo Credit: CISAC
Hero Image
An abandoned guard post at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in April 1998. Hecker used this photo to convince his Russian colleagues that they needed to cooperate with the Americans and Kazakhs to secure the site. | Siegfried Hecker
The Lavon Affair, a failed Israeli covert operation directed against Egypt in 1954, triggered a chain of events that have had profound consequences for power relationships in the Middle East; the affair’s effects still reverberate today. Those events included a public trial and conviction of eight Egyptian Jews who carried out the covert operation, two of whom were subsequently executed; a retaliatory military incursion by Israel into Gaza that killed 39 Egyptians; a subsequent Egyptian–Soviet arms deal that angered American and British leaders, who then withdrew previously pledged support for the building of the Aswan Dam; the announced nationalization of the Suez Canal by Nasser in retaliation for the withdrawn support; and the subsequent failed invasion of Egypt by Israel, France, and Britain in an attempt to topple Nasser. In the wake of that failed invasion, France expanded and accelerated its ongoing nuclear cooperation with Israel, which eventually enabled the Jewish state to build nuclear weapons.
CISAC Faculty Member and former U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry tells the story of how he became a nuclear weapons abolitionist. He recounts six personal experiences that led him to turn away from his lifelong career of developing and managing nuclear weapons, and pursue the goal of eliminating them.
