By Steven Shankland
In 1995, I visited the Russian nuclear weapons city of Sarov. Here, I'm showing a copy of the newspaper where I worked at the time, the Los Alamos Monitor, to physicist Viktor Adamsky, who helped design the Tsar Bomba -- the most powerful nuclear weapon ever exploded.
In 1995, I visited the Russian nuclear weapons city of Sarov. Here, I'm showing a copy of the newspaper where I worked at the time, the Los Alamos Monitor, to physicist Viktor Adamsky, who helped design the Tsar Bomba -- the most powerful nuclear weapon ever exploded.
I spent more than five years (click here) as a reporter in Los Alamos, New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb, home to a major national laboratory, and the 18,000-person town where I grew up. I covered everything from President Bill Clinton visiting the lab to mostly harmless radioactive cat poop triggering radiation alarms at the county landfill. But the story that made the biggest impression on me took place thousands of miles away, in Russia.
In May 1995, I was part of a seven-person civilian delegation that traveled to Los Alamos sister city Sarov, about 230 miles east of Moscow. It's the home of the institute where Russia developed its first atomic bomb. Our visit was timed to coincide with a 50th anniversary celebration of the end of the Great Patriotic War, aka World War II, which for the Russians ended when the Germans capitulated in May 1945.
It was a sobering visit -- the economic devastation; the Soviet-era microphones bugging away in our hotel; the angry and impoverished veterans; and the daunting quantities of vodka, champagne and cognac that accompanied us during a weeklong series of banquets. I spoke with Viktor Adamsky, one of the designers of the biggest nuclear bomb of all time, the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba, which was more powerful than all the bombs dropped in World War II.
I'm remembering it now because I've recently interviewed Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and a key leader of the US-Russian lab collaboration that led to my trip.
During the time of my trip, relations between Russia and the US were warming, but now they're cooling once again. That troubles Hecker -- even though he spent much of his career designing the nuclear weapons the US aimed at the then-USSR....
Russia has a long history of disrespecting life when it comes to testing their nuclear stockpile.
Russia has a long history of disrespecting life when it comes to testing their nuclear stockpile.
