Lab-to-LabA history of cooperation
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Weapons Safety and Security Exchange (WSSX)

Chapter 3 of Doomed to Cooperate contains a paper by Vladimir Afanasiev of VNIIEF, Sarov, on his institute’s many-sided collaboration on nuclear weapons safety. Editing for print compressed his original draft of dozens of pages and photographs into a shorter paper, leaving out many photographs and parts of the story. This section presents two original pieces that the author offered as appendices to his main text.

Working moment during the Los Alamos workshop on protection of nuclear facilities from fire. From the right: James Toevs, LANL, Paul White, LANL, Lev Belovodsky, VNIIEF, V. Afanasiev, VNIIEF. Los Alamos 2003.

A working moment at the Los Alamos workshop on protecting nuclear facilities from fire. From right: James Toevs (LANL), Paul White (LANL), Lev Belovodsky (VNIIEF), and Vladimir Afanasiev (VNIIEF). Los Alamos, 2003.

The first piece uses photographs and the author’s commentary to give the record of cooperation a personal face. It introduces leaders of the Soviet and Russian nuclear weapons complex who had the foresight and courage to support the lab-to-lab interaction, and it conveys both the hard work of moving the collaboration forward and its collegial character. The second is an illustrated summary of VNIIEF’s joint nuclear safety projects.

All of Afanasiev’s photographs are in the photo collection Vladimir Afanasiev’s Nuclear Safety Collection.

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