My Journey at the Nuclear Brink is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from a nuclear catastrophe. Decades of experience and special access to top-secret knowledge of strategic nuclear options have given Perry a unique, and chilling, vantage point from which to conclude that nuclear weapons endanger our security rather than securing it. At this presentation to launch the Chinese translation of his book, Perry will talk about the future of nuclear competition in the face of US and Russia’s nuclear capability boost claims, North Korea’s nuclear development and the recent deployment of US and South Korea THAAD system against North Korea’s missile. 

Published in the journal Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, this column by Seigfried Hecker below is based on content in his 2016 book, Doomed to Cooperate: How American and Russian Scientists Joined Forces to Avert Some of the Greatest Post-Cold War Nuclear Dangers:

On February 23, 1992, less than two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I landed on the tarmac in Sarov, a city the government had removed from maps to keep secret its status as a nuclear weapons center. I was then director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and­­ accompanied by two senior scientists from my own lab plus three colleagues from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The six of us were about to walk through the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear bomb, the technological and intellectual powerhouse behind the sophisticated arsenal that had been pointed at our country for the previous 40 years.

Shockingly, after an hour-long flight from Moscow, we stepped out of the Aeroflot turboprop into the open arms of our Russian hosts: Yuli Borisovich Khariton, the scientific leader of the Soviet nuclear program, and other senior lab staff who had waited in the chilly wind to welcome us. Just as remarkable was the fact that this wasn’t the first time we met our Russian counterparts. Two weeks earlier, directors of the Russian nuclear weapons labs, VNIIEF in Sarov and VNIITF in Snezhinsk, had for the first time in history set foot in our labs in Livermore and Los Alamos. This exchange of visits a quarter century ago marked a new turn in relations between the world’s two nuclear weapons superpowers.

The road to Sarov

Our first meeting on Russian soil would have been deemed improbable just a few months earlier. The encounter on the Sarov tarmac grew out of both persistence by determined individuals and larger historical forces. As the Soviet Union scrambled to adjust domestic and international policy in the face of mounting economic and social challenges in the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev reached across the political divide to US President Ronald Reagan to take steps toward nuclear disarmament. One such step was the Joint Verification Experiment of 1988, in which the Soviet Union and the United States asked their nuclear weapons scientists to conduct parallel nuclear-explosion yield measurements at testing grounds in Nevada and Semipalatinsk, located in what is now Kazakhstan. The experiment helped overcome a stumbling block related to verification procedures needed to ratify the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT). The 1988 nuclear tests enabled the two sides to sign a new ratification protocol in Geneva in June 1990, and the TTBT entered into force in December 1990.

As history would have it, an unintended outcome of the TTBT ratification effort proved to be the most momentous. Viktor Mikhailov, head of the Soviet team that took part in the Joint Verification Experiment and later Russian minister of atomic energy, was right when he said that “the main result of the Joint Verification Experiment was not the development of procedures and extent of nuclear test monitoring of the joint development of technical verification means, but the chance for interpersonal communications with the American nuclear physicists.”

Indeed, it was working side by side at each other’s test sites that gave rise to deep-rooted affinity and built trust. Over the years, we had only caught glimpses of our Soviet nuclear scientist counterparts at a few international conferences where they disguised their institutional affiliations, saying they were part of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. It was through months of collaboration at our test sites that the contours of their true home institutions—the nuclear weapons labs VNIIEF and VNIITF—began to emerge. As we would discover eventually, these Soviet labs were remarkably similar to our own. We realized that in addition to nuclear weapons work, they were conducting outstanding fundamental science. We became consumed with curiosity to learn more about it first-hand. The Russians were curious about our work as well.

We were all interested in cooperation, but the Russians even more so because they sensed before we did just how dramatically the Soviet Union was changing. Lev D. Ryabev, who headed the atomic ministry at the time, told me years later that Russian nuclear weapons scientists were so eager to work with their American counterparts because “we arrived in the nuclear century all in one boat—movement by any one will affect everyone. We were doomed to work together.”

It was during a 1990 trip to Moscow by Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore lab scientists for technical discussions supporting the Geneva test ban talks that Mikhailov extended an impromptu invitation to visit the USSR’s secret nuclear city Sarov (then called Arzamas-16) for the first time.

The American scientists returned with specific proposals from the VNIIEF director and his senior scientists for collaboration with the US labs, along with an invitation to Lawrence Livermore Director John Nuckolls and me to visit the secret Russian cities.

Convinced by my Los Alamos colleagues that this was a great opportunity to collaborate scientifically in important areas of research, I tried a number of avenues in Washington to get approval for exploring potential cooperation. I got little traction until the second half of 1991, after the Soviet Union had begun to disintegrate. As it did so, President George H.W. Bush became concerned that brain drain from the Soviet nuclear complex could lead to the spread of knowledge about how to build these weapons of mass destruction.

Driven by that concern, US Energy Secretary James D. Watkins approved my request for the laboratory directors’ exchange visits, and two months after Gorbachev’s formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, we entered the surreal world of the Soviet Los Alamos.

A tradition worth sustaining 

Our visits to Sarov and Snezhinsk shattered our Cold War preconceptions of the Soviet nuclear program. We were particularly impressed by the depth of scientific talent. Although they lacked modern computers and electronics, their computational achievements were remarkable, and their experimental facilities were innovative and functional. We found the scientists’ dedication to their mission deeply patriotic, and their attention to nuclear weapons safety reassuring. During our briefings and tours, Russian scientists described leading-edge research in the fundamental science that underpinned their nuclear weapons program. The visits convinced me that our US nuclear labs should collaborate with their Russian counterparts, not only to help solve immediate problems like proliferation and loose nukes, but also because in doing so we would benefit scientifically.

Our Russian colleagues were prepared with proposals for cooperation in a surprisingly broad range of areas. During a daylong session in Chief Weapon Designer Boris Litvinov’s office in Snezhinsk, watched by portraits of Lenin and Igor Kurchatov, one of the fathers of the Soviet Bomb, we hammered out a protocol for cooperation that we would take back to our governments. We came up with a long list problems we wanted to work on together. It included enhancing the security and safety of nuclear weapons during reduction and dismantlement; preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons knowledge; promoting the conversion and diversification of nuclear facilities; preventing non-nuclear states and terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons; developing joint mechanisms for emergency response; enhancing the safety of nuclear arsenals; preventing unauthorized use of remaining weapons; and promoting protection and cleanup of the environment at nuclear weapons facilities.

It turned out that we scientists were far ahead of what the US government was prepared to authorize at the time. We heard that when members of the National Security Council staff, which coordinated interagency government issues with Russia, received a copy of the protocol, they declared it did not exist and threw it in the waste paper basket. However, Nuckolls and I presented the protocol to Watkins and received approval to proceed, though only in fundamental science cooperation.

By May 1992, even though the US Energy and State Departments had only agreed to general principles, the former had provided us with the necessary financial support and the latter with the required permissions for travel to Russia. Just as importantly, we had defined what we wanted to do first in the collaboration we called lab-to-lab. We planned for joint experiments in high-energy-density physics and conferences on computer modeling and simulation.

In spite of the initial US government concerns, we would eventually end up cooperating in almost all the areas outlined in the initial protocol. A spirit of collaboration prevailed for nearly a quarter century, and was essential to successfully mitigating the dangers resulting from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, that cooperation has all but come to an end during the past few years as relations between Moscow and Washington have soured. But the benefits of future cooperation are potentially enormous, as a new report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative makes clear. The US and Russian governments, as well as the two countries’ scientists, should seize any opportunities that arise to rekindle nuclear cooperation.

Jaemin Jung, a writer for the South Korean publication known as “SisaIn,” recently interviewed CISAC's Siegfried Hecker on the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons:

Jung: In your recent op-ed piece in The New York Times, you said talking to North Korea is the best option for the Trump administration. Do you still believe so even when the current North Korean regime repeatedly declared to the world that it would never give up its nuclear program as a nuclear power state?

Hecker: Well, I still believe that talking directly, someone from the Trump administration to North Korea, is essential today. However, what I mean by talking is talk to the regime to make sure that we do not have a nuclear catastrophe. The main reason for talking is to eliminate a potential nuclear confrontation. The issue of whether or not North Korea should have nuclear weapons or will ever give up nuclear weapons has to be a much longer-term issue. The immediate issue, I believe, is that we have a nuclear crisis on our hands now, and we must talk in order to make sure that such a confrontation does not happen. So, that’s the reason for talking.

Jung: In other words, direct talk is essential to avoid any misunderstanding or miscalculation on the part of North Korea?

Hecker: Precisely. The reason for direct talking is to make sure there be no such misunderstanding, potential accidents, or potential escalations to the nuclear arena. Making sure that does not happen, that is the reason for talking now.

Jung: Does it mean that after you build trust from such talking, you then move on to real agenda such as denuclearization?

Hecker: Yes. So, what I recommend is not only talking but also listening. I think it’s important for the new administration to listen to what the Kim Jong Un regime has to say.  By listening we could learn enough to understand how to forge better negotiations, or the long term issue of getting rid of nuclear weapons.

Jung: Regarding the now suspended nuclear talks, many people blame the North for breaking its nuclear agreements with the U.S. or cheating repeatedly. In other words, whether we can trust North Korea is a big issue here. What is your take?

Hecker: Well, we don’t have a relationship that provides the underpinning or foundation for trust: trust by America about North Korea or trust by North Korea about the United States.  When it comes to negotiations, an agreement could be signed pretty quickly but trust can take years and years to develop. So, as you look back, North Korea has indeed violated many of the agreements that they signed. In some cases, we can say that it was to develop a hedge in case the United States dropped out of the agreement. For example, in the Agreed Framework signed in 1994, the United States did not follow its end as quickly and as fully as it promised to do. North Koreans developed a hedge. They cheated by developing an enriched uranium program. Over the years, the Agreed Framework may have been able to build trust by building two modern light water reactors there. But the Bush administration did not trust North Korea and killed the agreement. Now, 15 years later, there is still no trust. It would have to be developed. I think this would take at least a decade.

Jung: In that respect, trust is something not only North Korea but the United States should care about, right?

Hecker: That should be one of the main objectives of whatever next round of negotiations are.

Jung: In your article, you suggested direct talks between the US and North Korea instead of a multilateral talks like the 6-party talks.  In the past, the US tried many times talking directly with the North in Geneva or other places, but failed. Why now?

Hecker: The Geneva talks in 1994 were successful. They led to the Agreed Framework. The main reason that I proposed direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea now is, as I mentioned in the beginning, to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. We have to better understand what North Korea’s nuclear intentions are. What do they expect to get from their nuclear weapons, what are their nuclear policies, what do they have in place to avoid nuclear accidents, what do they have in place to make certain their nuclear weapons are safe and secure? Those kinds of discussions cannot be held in a multilateral forum. The only country that has the opportunity to have those kind of talks with North Korea is the United States. So, talk to avoid a nuclear catastrophe should be bilateral. Eventually negotiations have to include South Korea, they have to include China, and the 6-Party Talks members Japan and Russia should be involved. So, negotiations will have to be multilateral affair. However, to get to the point of meaningful negotiations, to avoid nuclear catastrophe, there should be bilateral talks. The sooner, the better.

Jung: Can you specify what you mean by ‘nuclear catastrophe’?

Hecker: What I’m concerned about is that in the past 10 years North Korea has developed, as best we know because nobody knows for sure, a really threatening nuclear arsenal, perhaps having enough nuclear material of 20-25 nuclear weapons. They continue to try and make those weapons more sophisticated and to be able to mount them on missiles. So, with that level of nuclear firepower, the reason that I worry about nuclear catastrophe is that one could have an accident, there is concern about security and safety of their nuclear weapons, there could be miscalculation on the part of the regime, there could be confrontation and escalation of military activities that could lead to nuclear use. Any use of nuclear devices of any sort on the Korean peninsula is what I call nuclear catastrophe. Today the most important part is to avoid the use or detonation of nuclear device on the Korean peninsula. That has to be the first objective of the Trump administration.

Jung: If the direct talks with the North go well, you said Trump should send a presidential envoy to Pyongyang.  Don’t you think Trump must get North Korea’s commitment to denuclearization before sending such an envoy?

Hecker: That approach misunderstands what my concerns are. My most immediate concerns are to avoid the use of nuclear weapons. The issue of denuclearization comes down the road. In other words, it’s a longer-term issue. The concerns I have about the use of nuclear weapons are so great that they require talks now without preconditions. Any future negotiations, of course, must be aimed at eventual denuclearization of North Korea. However, in my opinion, that’s much of a long-term issue. It will not happen over the next few years. I am not talking about negotiations now. I’m talking about talking, talking to avoid a nuclear catastrophe.

Jung: Do you prefer the U.S. talking with North Korea about it in formal or informal setting?

Hecker: I am saying at this point a presidential envoy should bring up the topic in a quiet, informal setting, but it has to have the imprimatur of the Trump administration.

Jung: In op-ed, you said the nuclear clock keeps ticking, and every six to seven weeks, the North may be able to add another nuclear weapon to its arsenal. Is the nuclear bomb based on plutonium only, or does it include uranium-based bomb, too?

Hecker: My estimate is not based on plutonium alone. It’s based on both plutonium and highly enriched uranium.  North Korea cannot produce more than one bomb’s worth of plutonium per year. With highly enriched uranium we have great uncertainties. We simply do not know enough about highly enriched uranium program. My best estimates are perhaps as many as six nuclear weapons out of highly enriched uranium per year.  So, it’s possible that North Korea could make 6-8 nuclear weapons per year. But let me stress the fact again that’s my best estimate, and we don’t know for certain. It’s important to realize that the nuclear crisis is here now. We don’t need to wait until North K. can reach mainland U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile.

Jung: So, how many nuclear weapons do you think North Korea has now?

Hecker: Again, all we can do is estimate, and my own estimate is North Korea may have enough plutonium and highly enriched uranium for perhaps 20-25 nuclear weapons as of the end of 2016.

Jung: Some experts believe freeze on North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, not denuclearization, is the best realistic option at this point to break the long stalled nuclear talks.  What do you think?

Hecker: I’ve been promoting for the last eight years or so that we proceed in the following manner: First, halt the program, then roll it back, and then eventually eliminate it. To me, freeze is the same as halt. So, the most important part is to stop the problem from getting worse. However, there are many aspects to what we call halt or freeze. I stated it in the following manner - I call it “Three Nos.” We would like North Korea to make no more bombs (that means, no more plutonium or highly enriched uranium), no better bombs (no more nuclear tests or long-range missile test), and no export of bombs or nuclear material. So, that would be the essence of a freeze or halt.)

Jung: I see many North Korea experts agree with your proposal as a realistic option to break the current bottleneck in the nuclear talks. Did you get any reaction from the U.S. government?

Hecker: Well, I wish the American government had supported that eight years ago, because then we’d be in a much better position today. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons we didn’t get there, and now we have to deal with the way things are. Now, the Trump administration comes in, and its challenge is to avoid a nuclear detonation on the Korean peninsula. That’s the challenge, and because of that, it’s a completely different challenge than the Obama administration or the Bush administration faced, and the Trump administration must address that challenge differently.

Jung: So, what is your advice to the Trump administration?

Hecker: At this point, talk to the North Koreans to prevent any sort of potential nuclear catastrophe, and then try to listen to the North Koreans. And make sure they understand our strong commitment to our allies, South Korea and Japan, and that we care about human rights in North Korea, and we are committed to the eventual denuclearization of North Korea. Finally, it will be to North Korea’s advantage to get back to serious negotiations to eventually denuclearize the Korean peninsula. That’s my advice.