Overview
	Technical Background
	The Threat
	Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials
	Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling
Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel   International Science & Technology Centers   Nuclear Cities Initiative   Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention   Civilian Research & Development Foundation   Impact of Other Programs
	Monitoring Stockpiles
	Ending Further Production
	Reducing Stockpiles

 

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Previous Publications
	Funding for U.S. Efforts to Improve Controls Over Nuclear Weapons, Materials, and Expertise Overseas: Recent Developments and Trends February2007 Readthe Full Report (1.5M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2006 The latest report in our series, from May 2006, finds that even though the gap between the threat of nuclear terrorism and the response has narrowed in recent years, there remains an unacceptable danger that terrorists might succeed in their quest to get and use a nuclear bomb, turning a modern city into a smoking ruin. Offering concrete steps to confront that danger, the report calls for world leaders to launch a fast-paced global coalition against nuclear terrorism focused on locking down all stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials worldwide as rapidly as possible. Read the Executive Summary (379K PDF) or the Full Report (1.7M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2005: The New Global Imperatives Our May 2005 report finds that while the United States and other countries laid important foundations for an accelerated effort to prevent nuclear terrorism in the last year, sustained presidential leadership will be needed to win the race to lock down the world’s nuclear stockpiles before terrorists and thieves can get to them. Read the Executive Summary (281 K) or the Full Report (1.9M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action Building on the previous years' reports, this 2004 NTI-commissioned report grades current efforts and recommends new actions to more effectively prevent nuclear terrorism. It finds that programs to reduce this danger are making progress, but there remains a potentially deadly gap between the urgency of the threat and the scope and pace of efforts to address it. Download the Full Report (1.2 M PDF) Выписки из доклада по-русски (423K PDF)
	Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan 2003 report published by Harvard and NTI measures the progress made in keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of terrorist hands, and outlines a comprehensive plan to reduce the danger. Download the Full Report (2.7M PDF)
	Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action 2002 report co-published by Harvard and NTI outlines seven urgent steps to reduce the threat of stolen nuclear weapons or materials falling into the hands of terrorists or hostile states. Read the Full Report (516K PDF)

Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel

Civilian Research and Development Foundation

Status

While receiving support from U.S. government agencies such as the Departments of State and Defense, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation, the CRDF is a wholly private, non-profit, non-governmental organization.

Starting the CRDF involved more than a year's joint effort by officials at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Science and Technology, the Departments of State and Defense, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and financier and philanthropist George Soros and his non-governmental Soros Foundation, working with their Russian counterparts.[2] Authorized under Section 511 of the FREEDOM Support Act (Public Law 102-511), the CRDF was announced by President Clinton at the May 1995 Moscow Summit with Russian President Yeltsin, and began operations in September 1995.[3]

The program got off the ground because Soros and his Foundation offered to provide $5 million, which the Department of Defense matched with $5 million of its own funding.[4] The CRDF used those initial gifts to fund its first round of research projects in 1995 and 1996. Since then, the CRDF has worked to expand its list of funders. In addition to the U.S. agencies listed above, funders have included the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Spencer Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the W. Alton Jones Foundation.[5] In many cases, these funders are in part making use of the CRDF's grant administration services (including its tax-exempt status), passing grants for their own purposes through the CRDF.

The cornerstone of the CRDF effort is its Cooperative Grants Program. In the words of the CRDF,

"The [Cooperative Grants Program] provides up to two-year support to joint U.S. and FSU [Former Soviet Union] research teams in all areas of basic and applied research in the natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, and biomedical and behavioral sciences. … Grants include individual financial support, equipment, supplies and travel support to FSU participants, institutional support to the FSU grantee institution, as well as U.S. team expenses for travel, supplies, and graduate student stipends."[6]

As of November 2002, this grant program has reached 3,500 scientists and engineers, and grants average about $60,000.[7]

The CRDF supports the effort to stabilize nuclear and other WMD scientists

"…by providing services, including project development, management, and oversight support, and merit-based technical review of R&D proposals, to U.S. Government initiatives designed to bring together U.S. civilian scientists and former Soviet defense researchers on collaborative projects."[8]

In addition, the CRDF supports project development visits by former weapons scientists to meet with U.S. scientists and industry representatives to develop ideas for submission, as appropriate, to the International Science and Technology Centers program.[9] In 2002, the CRDF also supported a special competition to have former Soviet scientists research counter-terrorism technologies – which led to joint workshops on technologies for applications from cheaper and more reliable detection of hidden explosives to faster and better anthrax detection.[10]

In the late 1990s, the CRDF launched a "Closed Cities" program, which was specifically focused on promoting collaborations between American researchers and Russian scientists from Russia's closed cities (including particularly the ten closed nuclear cities). The program complemented ISTC and IPP efforts, by providing travel and proposal development support for the American side of these collaborations, which had been unavailable. CRDF phased out this effort in 2001, because it determined that such support was now available from other CRDF and U.S. government programs.[11] Despite the demise of this targeted program, CRDF continued a number of activities related to nuclear weapons scientists, such as a civilian fuel cell development project involving scientists from the nuclear weapon design laboratory at Sarov (formerly Arzamas-16), being pursued in partnership with IPP – and over 40 percent of CRDF's travel grants in 2001 went to former weapons scientists, to allow them to travel from remote weapons sites for international collaborations.[12]

Budget

See budget table

The Civilian Research and Development Foundation is a smaller organization than the International Science and Technology Centers. In 2000, total expenditures were $10.5 million, and for 2001, they were $15.2 million.[13]

Since the first donation given by the Department of Defense (DOD) launched the operations of the CRDF, the basic underlying support has been provided by the State Department. Through fiscal year (FY) 2002, DOD and the State Department have provided $61.2 million to support the CRDF.[14] What had been very modest support from the State Department in its first few years of involvement– ranging from $1 to $5 million – has increased to annual funding at around $15 million since FY 2000.

As noted above, several U.S. Government agencies other than the Departments of Defense and State have supported the work of the CRDF. Like those small, one-time contributions to the International Science and Technology Centers, these small interagency transfers can be extremely difficult to track. However, it should be noted that available information on the National Science Foundation does show that in addition to the $61.2 million contributed since 1994 by the Departments of Defense and State, the NSF provided $32.4 million to the CRDF since its inception.[15]

Key Issues and Recommendations

Finding a niche. The CRDF is by far the smallest piece of the overall effort to stabilize scientists and engineers in the Former Soviet Union with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) expertise. In fact, it is a part of that effort only tangentially, because WMD science and technology was such an important component of the scientific endeavors in the Soviet Union. The authorizing legislation of the CRDF envisioned support and furtherance of former Soviet science and technology broadly, calling for it to "provide productive research and development opportunities within the independent states of the former Soviet Union that offer scientists and engineers alternatives to emigration and help prevent the dissolution of the technological infrastructure of the independent states," and to "assist in the establishment of a market economy in the independent states of the former Soviet Union by promoting, identifying, and partially funding joint research, development, and demonstration ventures."[16]

• Recommendation: The CRDF should continue to invest in activities that have a nonproliferation benefit, in those cases where its unique non-governmental status and approaches can complement other U.S. and international efforts – but there should be a consistent policy of avoiding overlap with activities that could be done as well or better in other, larger programs focused on nonproliferation.

• Recommendation: U.S. officials should resist advertising the CRDF as primarily a nonproliferation initiative in making the case for its budget. The CRDF's civilian science mission is important in its own right, and selling the program on grounds that are tangential to its core mission may distort the program focus or lead to pressures to fold the program in to the International Science and Technology Centers or the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention

Links

Written by Matthew Bunn. Last updated by Matthew Bunn on November 5, 2002.

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The Securing the Bomb section of the NTI website is produced by the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) for NTI, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. MTA welcomes comments and suggestions at atom@harvard.edu. Copyright 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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