Doomed to cooperate: How American and Russian nuclear scientists joined forces to mitigate some of the greatest post-Cold War dangers
Siegfried S. Hecker

October 17, 2016

It is difficult to imagine today how dramatically global nuclear risks changed 25 years ago as the Soviet Union began to disintegrate. Instead of the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation, the world became concerned that Russia and the 14 other former Soviet states would lose control of their huge nuclear assets – the weapons, fissile materials, nuclear facilities and nuclear experts. I will describe how scientists and engineers at Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories joined forces with those at the Russian nuclear weapon institutes for more than 20 years to avoid what looked like the perfect nuclear storm – a story told in the recently released two-volume book Doomed to Cooperate. I will also reflect on how today’s strained political relations between Washington and Moscow have curtailed that cooperation to the detriment of a safer and more secure world.

Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow 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. His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards.

Presentation available soon.