The Lab-to-Lab program, a precursor to the US Department of Energy's Material Protection, Control & Accounting program, was a series of cooperative efforts between Russian and US nuclear weapons laboratories. Officially begun in October 1992, the Lab-to-Lab program finds its roots several years earlier as nuclear scientists in Russia and the United States began to consider working together on experiments of mutual interest.  Having always been interested in each other's work, the nuclear scientists of both countries quickly developed informal ties.  They began to discuss joint work on projects in areas such as pulsed power, hot magnetized plasmas, and soft x-rays. The scientific collaboration was extremely productive and the links between Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Sarov (Arzamas-16) grew substantially.  The endeavor was largely done without government involvement and served as a major trust-building exercise between the scientists of the two countries.[1]

In March 1994, Undersecretary of Energy Charles Curtis approved a plan that would focus the labs on MPC&A (material protection, control, and accounting) concerns.  A Government-to-Government MPC&A program had been in place for several years, but it was running into paralyzing difficulties.  One such difficulty stemmed from the issue of security sensitivity.  After 50 years of being Cold War adversaries, the governments were very reluctant to talk about their nuclear complexes and capabilities. Other problems were caused by uncertainty as to who had responsibility for what in the Russian nuclear complex. A further impediment to the Government-to-Government program was the "buy American" clause included in the original Nunn-Lugar legislation, which required that the money given by Congress to improve MPC&A could only be spent on US goods and services.  The hope was that these obstacles could be overcome using the already proven Lab-to-Lab framework.

Scientists from both LANL and Sarov had been informally discussing such cooperation for several years, so when the Department of Energy (DOE) granted approval, events moved quickly.  Within a few months, a demonstration of MPC&A technologies was set up at Sarov.  By the end of 1995, pilot projects for MPC&A upgrades were successfully demonstrated at Sarov, the Kurchatov Institute, and the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE).  Since then, the program has spread to many of the other facilities in the Minatom nuclear complex and MPC&A systems are being created and upgraded through this joint cooperation.[1]

The Lab-to-Lab program has helped create and install such MPC&A technologies as computerized control and accounting, access control systems, electronic scales, seals, portal monitors, metal detectors, video surveillance systems, gamma spectroscopy equipment, fences, pedestrian and vehicle monitors, and other radiation detection and monitoring equipment.[2,3]

At a January 1996 meeting of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission (GCC), US Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary and Russian Federation Minister of Atomic Energy Viktor Mikhailov signed two joint statements that expanded MPC&A cooperation to six new facilities and established five guiding principles for future joint MPC&A work. On 15 July 1996, O'Leary and Mikhailov met again and established a new program to improve nuclear material transportation security.  They also added four more sites for MPC&A cooperation.[2,3]

In 1996, DOE assumed funding responsibilities for future activities in this area, and in February 1997, DOE consolidated its Government-to-Government and Lab-to-Lab programs into the Material Protection, Control & Accounting (MPC&A) program.[4]
Sources:
[1] "Russian-American Collaborations to reduce the Nuclear Danger," Los Alamos Science, No. 24, 1996.
[2] Department of Energy, Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation, Task Force Report: Program of Cooperation on Nuclear Material Protection, Control, and Accounting. Washington, D.C., December 1996.
[3] Department of Energy, Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation, Partnership for Nuclear Material Security. Washington, D.C., January 1997.
[4] CNS Interview with DOE Official, July 1997.{Updated 4/11/01 KB}

Page last updated 13 April 2001

This material is produced independently for NTI by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. Copyright © 2002 by MIIS.

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