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Atomic City
Atomic City:
A Personal Perspective on Russia's Leading Nuclear Weapons Facility
By Susan Eisenhower
On July 12, I stood to speak before two hundred former Soviet weapons scientists, engineers, industrialists and generals in a closed city in the heart of Russia's Ural Mountains. I was the only foreigner at a gathering to mark the 70th birthday of Russia's leading nuclear weapons designer Evgeny Avrorin, hydrogen bomb designer par excellence. Looking out over the audience I suggested, lightheartedly, that we did not need any more pronouncements on the end of the Cold War; my presence at this top secret facility, the Zababakhin Center in Snezhinsk, was proof enough that it is over.
There is some sense of surrealism in visiting Snezhinsk. The deadly business that made this a company town is utterly belied by the sapphire tranquility of the lakes that surround the nuclear facility, located well within sight of the gently sloping Urals, the Appalachians of Eurasia. The region, Chelyabinsk Oblast, is known as a "land of three thousand lakes." It is possible to take a boat for more than 50 miles, traveling from one lake to another, through a necklace of natural waterways. Surrounding the pristine waters are pine and birch forests that fill hundreds of thousands of empty acres. If you were asked to conjure up a mental picture of Mother Russia in all her natural glory, this would be it.
It was Soviet practice to place its top-secret facilities in remote places. After World War II they brought a group of German nuclear scientists they'd corralled in the final days of the war and set them to work on specific scientific issues related to their bomb program. The Germans were installed at an encampment in the woods called Site 21. In 1955, the Soviets built another facility just down the road that was to become the Lawrence Livermore of the USSR. Before 1991, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, this closed city, with a barbed wire fence that surrounds it completely, had only a mailbox number: Chelyabinsk-70. The Zababakhin Russian Federal Nuclear Center and the small city that supports it, now called Snezhinsk, did not appear on any maps except top-secret ones. Furthermore, access to this site was not only unthinkable for any foreigner, entry was restricted to a highly classified select group of Soviet military, scientists and industrialists, many of whom were there that day to honor Evgeny Avrorin. Avrorin had been key in establishing his Institute's leading role in the nuclear empire of the Soviet Union. Of Russia's arsenal today, 70 per cent of it is based on designs and developments that come from the Zababakhin Center.
I had visited this nuclear weapons facility before. In 2000, former Congressman Butler Derrick and I came to Snezhinsk as members of the blue-ribbon task force called the Baker-Cutler Commission. Convened to evaluate Department of Energy funded non-proliferation programs, Derrick and I toured secured buildings, including a number inside the third perimeter fence. We also talked to scientists and "Town Fathers" alike about the future of the community and the rising tensions caused by diminished job potential and other special problems associated with closed cities.
On this recent trip, University of Maryland Distinguished Professor of Physics and Institute Senior Associate, Roald Sagdeev, and I traveled to Snezhinsk to continue our discussions that began with the Zababakhin Center in April in Washington regarding an Eisenhower Institute project on Safeguarding the Atom. We were also there to attend Avrorin's birthday, as such events are regarded as important occasions within the scientific communities in countries all over the world.
Given the intensity of the Cold War, the ten short years since the collapse of the USSR, the conservative nature of the audience, and the natural patriotic emotions that such events evoke, it was significant that no one speaking at Avrorin's birthday said anything that could be construed as anti-American. In fact, in Europe a few days later we observed noticeable bitterness toward the United States and what they regard as our unilateral ways. In Russia, at least, adversarial language was gone from what was otherwise an occasion for nostalgia. And, I, as an American figure, was treated as an honored guest.
In this context, it seemed natural that I should extend greetings to Avrorin from The Eisenhower Institute. I also offered best wishes from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and the U.S. National Academy of Science's standing Committee on International Security and Arms Control, where I serve as a board member and a member respectively. These linkages demonstrate that contacts, once prohibited, are now a vital part of a strategy to reduce the dangers of nuclear weapons and potential nuclear terrorism. Indeed, thanks to US programs through the Department of Energy, Avrorin and his colleagues have had many years of on-going dialogue and cooperation with the Department of Energy, including with their counterparts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories.
It was striking how much more informal my contacts in Snezhinsk were on this trip than in 2000, even with so many important figures from the classified world present, especially those as yet still unknown to the West. On a number of occasions I had to remind myself of where I was and to whom I was talking, for in every way they seemed like any other group of friends and colleagues gathered to celebrate someone- full of open smiles, with presents in hand. Arriving at a dinner banquet after the ceremony, these bomb and rocket men and their wives came in evening dress, ready to dance to a rock band from the local high school (who sang many of their numbers in heavily accented English) and to cheer the birthday boy with loud and increasingly raucous toasts as the evening wore on.
Despite what seemed to be like any other high-spirited evening, I couldn't help being fascinated by the ironies that seemed to abound. How could so many friendly and seemingly normal people have been engaged in such deadly work? How could our countries, with the same taste in music and the same social traditions, end up with nuclear daggers drawn-with many of these people playing principal roles in that confrontation? Some could argue that both Livermore and Zababakhin were the leading institutions of people dedicated to designing ever-cleverer means and methods of destruction so that their governments could destroy the other and possibly the rest of the world. But that, of course, is not the way that weapons designers in either country ever saw their jobs. If the U.S. government has, of late, belittled the concept of deterrence, nuclear weapons designers, and these in particular, still fervently believe in it.
The speeches given in Avrorin's honor revealed a pride in accomplishing a nearly impossible feat: enabling a poor country to achieve nuclear parity with the United States. Avrorin (and others) were great patriots to protect their country by making an attack unthinkable, the toasters said. (I have heard the same sentiments expressed at speeches in the United States during similar testimonial dinners.)
Whatever the motivations or the moral issues confronted by those who worked as weapons designers, it is an objective fact that during the Cold War the United States, not to mention the USSR, spent up to five trillion dollars waging "war" against its enemy and its satellites. Among those most targeted, I reminded myself that evening with a chill, were the very people dancing with me to Neil Sedaka's "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen." Indeed, I mused to myself, today the United States and Russia still have weapons on hair trigger alert so if there would be an accidental nuclear launch, at that moment for instance, all of us in this room would be- Bulls eye!- Incinerated. Vaporized.
Fortunately, at the May summit in Moscow, Presidents Bush and Putin took steps to reduce further the vast nuclear stockpile still left in the Cold War arsenals. The document they signed called for reducing the number of weapons that are capable of delivering such devastation, but there is still much to be done in reaching agreement on crucial details, and neither side has even begun to discuss tactical nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, there has been, in effect, a break-through, brought about in no small measure by active Russian cooperation with the United States in the war on terrorism.
Though many at the Snezhinsk gathering were graying, and recruitment these days is not brisk like it was in the past, scientists working at such facilities are not working to retain parity with the United States as much as they are grappling with the excesses of the Cold War and trying to avert some other possible catastrophe. Much remains to be done and few people need reminding. In the late Fifties, not far from Snezhinsk, a nuclear accident occurred at Chelyabinsk 45 (Mayak). A radioactive plume ascended into the sky and began ominously to move. Precipitation from this radioactive cloud contaminated a lake, as well as wide swathes of land that are today still unfit for human life and agricultural purposes.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but even more so since the international war on terrorism, emphasis in Russia has been placed on securing materials that could help a terrorist or rogue nation build a nuclear device or bomb. Mitigating such potential, however, is an overwhelming undertaking. The Department of Energy estimates that Russia inherited 603 metric tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium from the USSR, in forms that make them attractive for theft. To put this into perspective, it only takes 25 kilos of HEU or 8 kilos of plutonium to build a nuclear bomb. With U.S. government help there has been real progress and the Department of Energy has helped secure 32% of the nuclear material at risk. But much of the remaining stockpile is in sensitive locations where access remains an issue. So, in effect the materials that are easy to safeguard have already been handled, but most of the dangerous materials are still beyond our reach, though not necessarily protected from potential theft.
Center Director Georgi Rykovanov is acutely aware of these facts. Indeed, he will be held personally responsible if any of the nuclear material at his facility is stolen. Pressure on him and others in his position has mounted from both the Russian and American sides, especially since the capture of would-be terrorist American born Jose Padilla, who was said to be preparing to build a "dirty bomb," perhaps in Washington DC. Dirty bombs, or Radiological Dispersion Devices (RDDs), are made by using conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material.
The Eisenhower's Institute's project on Safeguarding the Atom will, in partnership with the Zababakhin Center, undertake a special "track two" working group to try and find a solution to the problems of gaining access and/or establishing acceptable verification measures on American-funded security upgrades installed at top secret facilities. Leading experts will be brought together to brainstorm new ideas for finding a way out of the bi-lateral impasse that now exists. If new ideas are generated and we can move this issue off the mark, work can go forward to secure many of the most critical nuclear storage facilities in Russia, thereby significantly enhancing our national security and the security of our forces in the field.
The Russian nuclear industry faces other monumental challenges as well, and the problems confronting such cities as Snezhnisk reach to the very heart of Russia's future. How can the massive military-industrial establishment convert itself into a scientific and engineering contributor to Russia's economic growth and development? In this small community of 50,000, the transition will come with displacement. Early attempts to convert a proportion of the workforce at the Zababakhin Center to civilian projects, for instance, left 400 people without paychecks and a stable way to make a living. The experiment left many people very nervous. Given the difficulties associated with gaining permission to enter the city, it will be a difficult task to reorient the community to non-military business activity.
The Eisenhower Institute will also be working with the Zababakhin Center and the Mayor's office to assess the future of some legitimate commercial alternatives for Russian scientists and non-scientists trapped in this closed city. Without any future prospects, or any efforts at mediation, such a small community could turn from a pressure cooker into something more like a powder keg (Cont.).
Already, some indications of social tension can be seen. Empty vodka bottles can be found littered in local parks and graffiti has appeared in a number of unlikely and disturbing spots. In other places there is a feeling of indifference and neglect. Long grass grows from the cracks in the sidewalks, paint peels from the downtown cultural center and the lawns everywhere in town grow high.
At the same time, new construction is underway, including a new tree-lined boulevard, a few high-rise apartment buildings, and a sports facility. In these places there is some sense of growth, some feeling of motion. But somehow one feels that this timeless place is in a race against time.
On an evening walk around the city the full sun is soft, as is only the case in northern skies. The sweet smell of pine resin is in the air. A few motorcyclists roar by, and occasionally young couples come out for a stroll, pushing their babies in carriages. Splashing water from the lake's edge can be heard accompanied by the distant laugher of small children. They serve as just one more reminder of what is at stake.