Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI. He is also an emeritus director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. Hecker currently is on sabbatical working on a book project and will return to Stanford in the summer of 2013 to resume his research and teaching.
Hecker's research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapons policy and international security, nuclear security (including nonproliferation and counter terrorism), and cooperative nuclear threat reduction. Over the past 18 years, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials.
His current interests include the challenges of nuclear India, Pakistan, North Korea, and the nuclear aspirations of Iran. Hecker works closely with the Russian Academy of Sciences and is actively involved with the U.S. National Academies.
Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.
Among his professional distinctions, Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Research Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
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Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.
Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.
Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.
Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.
Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.
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Siegfried Hecker
Professor (Research), Management Science and Engineering; FSI and CISAC Senior Fellow
Speaker
About the Topic: As the U.S. considers potential paths towards nuclear arms reductions, key considerations are asymmetry (the state of the US nuclear stockpile/deterrent and variations in international nuclear capabilities) and risk (degree of transparency/trust and ability to verify commitments). As stockpile numbers go down, each weapon takes on increased importance and stability of deterrence will be essential. Technically we can achieve reduced risk levels in our stockpile and the ability to verify compliance, if we plan and prepare. Increased transparency and dialogue could enable better understanding of the risks and help direct future negotiations in an environment of increased confidence.
About the Speaker: Bruce Goodwin is the Associate Director at Large for National Security Policy and Research and the Director of the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). In this role, he is the principal military and civilian policy liaison at LLNL. From 2001 until 2013, he was the Lab’s Principal Associate Director for the nuclear weapons program. In that role he was responsible for leading the stockpile stewardship program, for developing strategies, for establishing priorities, and for the design and maintenance of LLNL’s nuclear explosives. He is one of the world’s leading theoretical experts in plutonium and implosion dynamics, and has won the Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence Awardfor his work.
CISAC Conference Room
Bruce Goodwin
Associate Director at Large for National Security Policy & Research and Director, Center for Global Security Research (CGSR), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Speaker
In an interview with PBS NewsHour on September 3, Kenji Kushida speaks about the Japanese government's latest efforts to contain the leaking of radioactive water from Fukushima and the possible political fallout for Japan's ruling party.
Governments and the nuclear power industry have a strong interest in playing down the harmful effects of radiation from atomic weapons and nuclear power plants. Over the years, some scientists have supported the view that low levels of radiation are not harmful, while other scientists have held that all radiation is harmful. The author examines the radiation effects of nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in 1945; nuclear weapons testing; plutonium plant accidents at Windscale in England and Chelyabinsk in the Soviet Union; nuclear power plant emissions during normal operations; and the power plant accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States, Chernobyl in the Soviet Union, and Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. In each case, he finds a pattern of minimizing the damage to humans and attributing evidence of shortened life spans mostly to stress and social dislocation rather than to radiation. While low-level radiation is now generally accepted as harmful, its effects are deemed to be so small that they cannot be distinguished from the much greater effects of stress and social dislocation. Thus, some scientists declare that there is no point in even studying the populations exposed to the radioactive elements released into the atmosphere during the 2011 accident at Fukushima.
About the Topic: Analysis of environmental samples collected for nuclear forensics purposes typically involves determination of isotopic composition, which can sometimes (but not always) reveal information about nuclear events or processes that resulted in the anthropogenic radioactivity. This information is referred to as the “isotopic signature”. Sequential extractions have been used for many years to determine chemical forms of contaminants for environmental regulatory purposes and clean-up decisions, and they can reveal “chemical signatures” about the events or processes that resulted in contamination. Coupling sequential extractions with isotopic determinations in nuclear forensics analyses provides an opportunity to link isotopic and chemical signatures, which can improve confidence in identifying the relevant nuclear event or process. This approach shows promise, particularly when coupled with nuclear fuel cycle process knowledge. Examples involving contaminated nuclear sites in the US and Russia will be discussed.
About the Speaker: Sue B. Clark is the regents distinguished professor of chemistry with tenure at Washington State University. She also holds an appointment to the US Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, appointed in 2011 by President Barack Obama. Her current research areas include the environmental chemistry of plutonium and other actinides, chemistry of radioactive waste systems, and actinide separations. She has over 100 peer-reviewed publications in these areas.
Her research support includes grants and contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science and National Nuclear Security Administration. Prof. Clark is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Chemical Society (ACS), and is the 2012 recipient of the ACS’s Olin-Garvan Medal. Prof. Clark is an editor for the journal Radiochimica Acta. Professor Clark holds a BS degree in Chemistry from Lander College (Greenwood, SC) and MS and PhD degrees in Chemistry from Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL).
CISAC Conference Room
Sue B. Clark
Professor and Chair, Chemistry Department, Washington State University
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
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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.
How are the Japanese people reacting to the news of the continuing contamination leak and what does it mean for Japan's energy policy? In an interview with PBS NewsHour on August 8, Kenji E. Kushida speaks about what the government may do to stop the flow.
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Unit 4 of TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (02813334)
CISAC's Sig Hecker talks to one of India's most respected newspapers, The Hindu, about why he admires India's nuclear energy program. India's world-class nuclear researchers can still learn many lessons from the Fukushima nuclear crisis, particularly in fostering a culture of safety. The world's largest democracy must demonstrate to its citizens that nuclear power is safe and sustainable in order to pursue its ambitious energy program.
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The undergound tunnel being built to connect the Fast-Breeder Nuclear Reactor to the sea, at the Kalpakkam Nuclear Complex, India, January 2013.
This paper reflects on the credibility of nuclear risk assessment in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns. In democratic states, policymaking around nuclear energy has long been premised on an understanding that experts can objectively and accurately calculate the probability of catastrophic accidents. Yet the Fukushima disaster lends credence to the substantial body of social science research that suggests such calculations are fundamentally unworkable. Nevertheless, the credibility of these assessments appears to have survived the disaster, just as it has resisted the evidence of previous nuclear accidents. This paper looks at why. It argues that public narratives of the Fukushima disaster invariably frame it in ways that allow risk-assessment experts to “disown” it. It concludes that although these narratives are both rhetorically compelling and highly consequential to the governance of nuclear power, they are not entirely credible.
