Special articles and reports on timely nonproliferation issues by CNS staff.

Updated: July 6, 2009

Building a Community of Young Nonproliferation Specialists in Russia

With the aim of training a new generation of nonproliferation specialists, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies has been conducting a number of nonproliferation education and outreach activities in Russia. Many of these activities are community-building oriented and are aimed at engaging former participants of the CNS Visiting Fellows Program and attracting a new generation to the nonproliferation field.

One of the latest such community-building activities in Russia was the organization of a nuclear nonproliferation session at the international scientific conference "Snezhinsk and Science — 2009: Current Problems of Nuclear Science and Technologies," held on June 1-5, 2009. The conference is organized once every three years in the closed nuclear city of Snezhinsk (Chelyabinsk region, Russia), home to the Russian nuclear warhead design and fabrication facility, the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics (VNIITF). Conference organizers and sponsors included the Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation, the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute (MEPhI), VNIITF, and the Snezhinsk State Physical and Technical Academy (SSPhTA).

The conference traditionally focuses on matters related to theoretical and applied mathematics and physics, nuclear physics and atomic energy, technologies and materials, ecology and medical physics, development of atomic energy and the closed cities. This year, for the first time, the conference featured a session devoted exclusively to the topic of nonproliferation. Entitled "Nuclear Nonproliferation," the session was the result of a joint effort between SSPhTA and CNS with financial support from the U.S. Department of Energy.

For over five years CNS has been cooperating with SSPhTA (an academic institution that prepares personnel for the Russian nuclear research and energy sector) on nonproliferation education and training activities, including the development and implementation of an elective nuclear nonproliferation course for academy students. Last year, CNS embraced an SSPhTA proposal to add a new nonproliferation session to the June science conference and has been working closely with academy staff, including a former CNS visiting fellow, to bring the session idea to fruition. The main objectives were to attract interested faculty and students from the Urals and Siberian regions, in order to bring them together to discuss nonproliferation-related topics in a regional conference, as well as to help other conference participants, mostly nuclear scientists, become more familiar with nonproliferation issues. CNS engaged a great number of former visiting fellows from the region in the work of this session, giving them an opportunity to network with their peers and representatives of the nuclear scientific community.

With more than 40 applications for participation and 30 abstracts for presentations, the new session was one of the largest at the conference. Session participants included faculty members and students from SSPhTA, Urals State University, Urals State Polytechnic University, Novouralsk State Technological Institute, Novosibirsk State University, Tomsk State University, Tomsk Polytechnic University, and Tyumen State University. In addition to universities, a number of experts from VNIITF participated in the session. The presentations were divided into three categories: 1) technical aspects of nonproliferation; 2) political aspects of nonproliferation; and 3) nonproliferation education. Along with expert presentations, including presentations by a number of former CNS visiting fellows from Novouralsk State Technological Institute, Novosibirsk State University, Tomsk State University and Urals State University (USU), the session featured a number of student presentations in the first two categories that were judged to be outstanding by an expert committee. The best student paper in "technical aspects of nonproliferation" category was a presentation by two Tomsk Polytechnic University students, Olga Mikhailova and Alexandra Khudoleeva, entitled "Assessment of the Effectiveness of a Physical Protection System at a university." The best student paper dealing with the political aspects of nonproliferation was an in-depth analysis by Natalia Leontieva, a student from Urals State University, of the development of Spain's export control system.

The second day of the session included a number of presentations by university professors engaged in teaching nonproliferation courses at their schools. These included Dr. Alexander Sadovsky from SSPhTA, Dr. Kirill Nekrasov from the Ural State Polytechnic University and Dr. Dmitry Pobedash from USU (all former participants in the CNS Visiting Fellows program). Margarita Sevcik, who represented CNS at this event, gave a presentation on the importance of nonproliferation and disarmament education and provided a general review of CNS nonproliferation education programs and initiatives. The session was concluded with a round-table discussion of the future of nonproliferation education and ways to effectively utilize distance learning in this process.

The nonproliferation session at the international scientific conference "Snezhinsk and Science — 2009: Current Problems of Nuclear Science and Technologies" is an example of the "multiplier" effect of CNS training programs. Not only did the session bring together a number of CNS former visiting fellows, who comprised about one-third of session participants, it also engaged their students, who were attracted to the nonproliferation field through courses taught by the former CNS fellows at universities in the Urals and Siberia.

Given the successful outcome of the first nonproliferation session at the Snezhinsk conference, the organizers are already discussing plans to host similar sessions in future. They hope to attract additional Russian participants, as well as scholars and scientists from other countries in the Newly Independent States, the European Union, and possibly the United States and other regions of the world.