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Money approved by the US and Europe to fund nonmilitary research projects
at Russia’s nuclear laboratories may not reach the scientists it was intended
for. American officials have warned that scientists from the Russian Academy
of Sciences are lining up for funds, leaving researchers from military and
nuclear laboratories out in the cold.

The US and the European Community announced last week that they would
provide $50 million for an international science and technology centre in
Russia. Japan is also considering a ‘substantial contribution’ to the centre,
which is supposed to be operating by midsummer. Russia will choose its location,
probably in Moscow. The centre will funnel money into research on environmental
protection, energy production and nuclear safety to be carried out at research
institutes that were formerly devoted to military technology.

The centre’s goal is to provide research opportunities for the scientists
and engineers who helped to build the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal. This
is supposed to discourage them from selling their skills to Iraq, North
Korea and other nations that are suspected of wanting to produce nuclear
weapons of their own.

But an aide to Senator Jeff Bingaman, who visited Russia and Ukraine
last week, says that the centre’s Russian partners are drawn mostly from
the former Soviet Academy of Sciences. He says these officials are ‘totally
disconnected’ from institutes run by the Ministry of Defence or by the Ministry
of Atomic Power and Industry, where most military research is carried out.
In addition, the new centre is seen as dominated by Russia and of little
use to Ukraine or the other states of the CIS.

The answer, according to Bingaman’s aide, is to develop ‘multiple channels’
to these scientists and engineers. Several initiatives to create such channels
are under way. Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington
DC received a memo last week asking for names of researchers in the former
Soviet Union whose research might be worth sponsoring.

The scientific directors of the two US nuclear laboratories and their
counterparts in Russia visited each other in February. These were the most
extensive visits from the West that have been allowed to the Russian institutes,
which are in the isolated towns of Chelyabinsk and Sarova.

The directors, Sig Hecker of Los Alamos National Laboratories and John
Nuckolls of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, met the energy secretary
James Watkins when they returned. Watkins issued a statement saying that
he was ‘encouraged’ at the promising prospects for collaboration with Russian
laboratones.

Some American officials believe that Russian nuclear research institutes
may be able to use their ‘sister’ laboratories in the US as a link to private
companies. National laboratories in the US have joined industrial consortia
developing advanced metals, batteries and superconducting materials, and
there is speculation that the Russian institutes could participate as
well.

The National Academy of Sciences added its voice to the debate last
week, sending the White House a memo urging the US to do more to save science
in the CIS. In addition to the $25 million that the US has approved for
the Moscow centre, the academy recommended that an equal amount be spent
to support scientists who were not working for the military. This aid would
encourage them to ‘remain in place and to help in building a civilian market-oriented
economy’, says the report.