Help Using this Section
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
International Science and Technology Centers
Status
![[ click here for larger photo ]](../../../images/cnwmphoto_istc1_sm.jpg) High-tech battery production at a Russian nuclear weapons lab, resulting from ISTC grant. |
The International Science and Technology Centers are a multilateral effort to provide opportunities for scientists of the former Soviet Union with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) expertise to engage in peaceful research — both basic and applied. The goal of the two Centers, based in Moscow and Kiev, is to reduce the likelihood — if possible, to zero — that such scientists or the institutes at which they work would be tempted to provide their expertise to terrorists or proliferating states. They do this by providing grants to fund peaceful research by former weapons scientists, combined with some efforts to facilitate these scientists' transition to long-term, sustainable civilian activities. The program includes nuclear weapons scientists, but it welcomes all "weapons scientists and engineers, particularly those who possess knowledge and skills related to weapons of mass destruction or missile delivery systems," in the former Soviet Union.[1] |
One of the longest run cooperative proliferation threat reduction programs, in 2001, the Bush administration cited the International Science and Technology Centers in its review of nonproliferation and threat reduction assistance to Russia as one of four programs identified for expansion.[2] According to the U.S. State Department, as of April 2002, since their inception the Centers had "engaged," i.e. supported through financial grant, training, or administrative support, nearly 50,000 former Soviet scientists and engineers.[3] According to the State Department, roughly half of these are "senior scientists.[4] By comparison, State Department officials estimate that there were somewhere between 30,000 and 75,000 senior scientists and engineers in the former Soviet complex, though they note that "The United States national security community has never established a definitive estimate of the total [former Soviet Union] WMD scientific population."[5]
![[ click here for larger photo ]](../../../images/cnwmphoto_istc2_sm.jpg) Through ISTC, former Soviet weapons scientists participate in major international research. |
The International Science and Technology Centers, or Science Centers, as they are often called, began with a multilateral agreement signed by the United States, the Russian Federation, the European Union (EU), and Japan on November 27, 1992.[6] The original center, the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC) in Moscow, began operations on March 3, 1994.[7] From the four founding partners, its membership list quickly expanded to include several other former Soviet states — Kazakhstan, Georgia, Belarus, Armenia in 1994; Kyrgyzstan in 1995; Tajikistan in 2002 — and other supporting countries — Norway in 1997 and South Korea in 1998.[8] Moldova is also in discussions with the ISTC about acceding.[9] |
A Governing Board made up of the four founding partners and a chair held by one of the other former Soviet countries in one-year rotations oversees the ISTC. In turn, a Coordinating Committee of country representatives and a Scientific Advisory Committee with members from the four founding partners advise the Governing Board on the proposals under review. With an international staff of over 150 personnel, the Secretariat, with headquarters in Moscow and five branch offices in the other former Soviet countries, manages the daily operations of the Center, overseeing grant projects, providing training and business support to scientists, and implementing other transition support projects of the center.[10] While the senior staff of the Secretariat includes representatives from all the member countries, the implementing staff is made up mostly of Russian nationals hired by the host Russian government.[11]
Following the example of the ISTC, the United States signed an agreement with Ukraine, Canada, and Sweden on October 15, 1993, to found a second center, the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU) in Kiev.[12] Upon Sweden's accession to the European Union, the EU took on Sweden's place in the STCU in 1998. In that same year, Georgia and Uzbekistan formally joined the STCU, while Japan began participating as a sponsor of and contributor to various STCU projects.[13] As of early 2002, Azerbaijan had requested to accede to the STCU, while discussions about Moldova and Tajikistan acceding have also taken place.[14] The STCU is the smaller of the two: in 2001, STCU funded $10.1 million in new projects, as opposed to the $75.8 million in new projects funded by the Russian ISTC in the same year.[15] Similar to the ISTC, the STCU has a Governing Board made up of the United States, the EU, Ukraine, and Canada, and is operated by a Secretariat.[16] In addition to the headquarters in Kiev, the roughly 70-person Secretariat also has offices in Lviv, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk.[17] Like the ISTC, staff members responsible for program implementation and oversight are usually Ukrainian nationals.[18]
Unfortunately, on October 14, 2002, the STCU Governing Board declared force majeure, suspending all current Ukrainian funded projects, though efforts since then appear to have resolved the issue favorably.[19] The Ukrainian government had rented a privately owned building to provide to the STCU (as it was required to do under the STCU Agreement), but had failed to pay rent for the last three years. On October 10, 2002, the private company disconnected the electrical power to the building, prompting the STCU Board to suspend all Ukrainian projects until the Ukrainian government fulfills its obligations to provide office space for the Center.
U.S. funding supports a number of activities that the Centers carry out to fulfill the goal of moving former Soviet WMD scientists into long-term peaceful work:
- Providing grants to engage former weapons scientists and their technical teams in the Science Project Program in peaceful science projects (discussed further below);
- Coordinating involvement by private business in the Partner Program in peaceful basic and applied research (discussed further below);
- Providing business management training and seminars to project managers and other weapons scientists;
- Administering hardware and software to improve the communication infrastructure and connectivity of participating institutes to allow them to better carry out the science project and improve their marketability for private commercial ventures;
- Offering assistance for scientists in registering patents for supported projects;
- Awarding travel grants to allow scientists to travel to international scientific meetings relative to the area of specialization;
- Maintaining a database of technologies and research results arising from supported research and, by agreement, from other organizations in the former Soviet Union, of which participating researchers and companies can make use.[20]
Science Project Program. The Science Centers' core activity is the funding of peaceful basic and applied research proposals from former WMD scientists and institutes. In deciding which projects to fund, both the ISTC and the STCU follow essentially the same process. After the host institute and country give prospective scientists and their assembled teams approval to move forward with a proposal, the teams submitted their proposal to the Center's Secretariat, which checks to ensure the proposal contains a complete plan of work and other information. The Secretariat then distributes the proposals to the representatives of the funding countries. In the case of the United States, every proposal is forwarded and reviewed; the other funding parties review only selected proposals submitted to them by the Secretariat.[21]
In the case of the United States, an office in the State Department’s Nonproliferation Bureau manages U.S. engagement with the Science Centers. Proposals received from the Secretariat are subjected to State Department-chaired interagency reviews that include the Departments of Defense and Energy and other relevant agencies, as well as outside scientific experts if necessary, to review the scientific and nonproliferation merits of the proposal.[22]
U.S. officials report that they prefer projects with senior scientists because the expertise of those scientists poses a greater proliferation threat.[23] They value projects at institutes with which the United States has yet to engage, unless officials view such institutes as having a bad proliferation track record due to inappropriate cooperation with proliferating states, such as Iran. Projects are also screened for their potential to actually aid WMD proliferation, especially in the sensitive biological area where separating offensive, defensive, and civilian work can be difficult.[24] Both government experts and outside consulting scientists examine the importance of the scientific contribution, and in the relevant cases, the potential commercialization of the project is also evaluated.
After these reviews are completed and recommendations made, officials from the Departments of State, Defense, and Energy balance the highest priority projects with the amount of funding available, and select which projects they are interested in funding. Then, at ISTC Governing Board meetings, the United States works with the other nations to decide which projects the ISTC as a whole will fund. Each member country chooses which projects they wish to fund, either entirely or in collaboration with other participating parties, so no country's funding goes towards a project with which it is not comfortable. Finally, the country staff works with the Science Centers Secretariat and the project team to fine-tune the final accepted proposal.
As of November 5, 2002, the ISTC had funded nearly 1,700 projects, while by June 2002 the Centers had engaged over 41,000 researchers since 1994 (the figure of 50,000 cited above included both the ISTC and those researchers engaged by the STCU).[25] In 2001 alone, the ISTC Science Project Program reports having funded 22,704 scientists and researchers with $29,853,000 in direct grants (many projects run longer than one year and scientists may receive multiple awards, so many of that number received funding in previous years).[26] In very few cases are these scientists fully occupied by the work they do for the Science Centers: in 2001, for instance, over a third of the scientists receiving funding devoted 25 full days or less to their ISTC-funded project.[27] Nearly 60 percent of those scientists receiving funding worked 50 days or fewer.[28] The 22,704 funded researchers worked 1,323,691 full-time days, meaning the average team member on a Science Project Program worked an average of 58 days on the project.[29]
The ISTC Science Project Program supports projects in a variety of fields. As a whole, the most popular field is biotechnology and life sciences, which has received 23 percent of funding over the life of the ISTC.[30] This category includes biochemistry, cytology, genetics and molecular biology, ecology, immunology, microbiology, nutrition, Pathology, pharmacology, physiology, public health, and radiobiology.[31] Research into the environment, which addresses areas such as remediation and decontamination, air and water pollution and control, and modeling and risk assessment, is the next most funded field, at 16 percent of the total. Physics (which includes areas such as atomic and nuclear physics, fluid mechanics and gas dynamics, optics and lasers, particles, fields and accelerator physics, plasma physics), fission reactors, and materials research (such as high-performance metals and alloys, ceramics, composites, and organic materials) round out the top five, at 12, 11, and 10 percent of the total funding, respectively.[32]
Projects funded by the United States reveal a slight variation in preferred research areas. Biotechnology and life sciences is still the favored area of research, with about 20 percent of the U.S. total contributions going towards projects in this field. However, environmental research has received a greater proportion of the U.S. total than the ISTC funding as a whole, taking up 20 percent of U.S. contributions. Physics, and fission reactor research constitute an additional 12 and 10 percent of the projects funded by the United States.[33]
Projects range in length from six months to more than three years.[34] Usually about 60-65 percent of grant funds are direct grants to scientists and technicians.[35] This money goes tax-free directly to the scientists doing the work, an arrangement vastly better than having payments go to host institutes where payments might be diluted among institute management and scientists who did not contribute directly to the project. Also, scientists are not paid until their quarterly financial reports are received and checked.[36] While the rate of pay for each hour work varies for the level of experience, the average wage is about $24 a day.[37] For comparison, a 2001 study published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace of a 1999 survey of employees in the closed Russian nuclear cities reported an average wage for specialists of $43 per month — though these salaries have increased substantially since then.[38] (See The Threat in Russia and the NIS.)
The rest of the project grant goes to other costs associated with the project, including possibly computing equipment, some laboratory equipment, and approved travel relevant to the project. Also, no more than 10 percent of the grant is permitted to be paid to the host institute to compensate them for overhead costs, such as electricity and heat.[39] Overall, less than 10 percent of the U.S. contribution to the Science Centers goes to non-project costs, such as central organization operations, program oversight, and financial audits.[40]
Nuclear Expertise. All former WMD scientists and their institutes are eligible for the program, but scientists and institutes involved in nuclear knowledge and expertise have certainly been heavily involved in the program. As of November 2002, the All-Russia Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (VNIIEF), in the nuclear city of Sarov, has hosted the largest number of projects — nearly 300 — with project teams receiving the largest amount of both total allocations (which includes private industry partner support) — $30.5 million — and direct ISTC grants — nearly $18.3 million.[41] In terms of total projects and direct ISTC grants, the All-Russian Institute of Theoretical Physics (VNIITF), in another closed nuclear city, Snezhinsk, is second on the list, with over 150 projects and $6.5 million in direct funding. In all, VNIITF has received $10.9 million in funding from the ISTC and private enterprise. The Mayak Production Association (NPO Mayak), in the closed city of Ozersk, also makes it onto the ISTC list of top institutes, with 16 projects and $250,000 in total funding from ISTC and private partners. As of February 2002, nearly 30 percent of all projects since the ISTC's inception had been carried out in the nuclear cities, while about 15 percent of total funding had gone to those cities.[42]
Partner Program. The Partner Program provides opportunities for "private industry, scientific institutions, and other governmental or non-governmental organizations" to use the contacts developed by the ISTC and STCU with former weapons scientists and institutes in the former Soviet Union.[43] The Centers tout a number of benefits for their program:
- Exemption from all taxes and customs duties on payments and imports;
- Direct payments in U.S. dollars to project scientists (rather than to the institute, where institute management might expropriate some of the funds intended for the scientists themselves);
- Use of the established ISTC project management infrastructure, including financial control and regular audits, in compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles;
- Project agreements stipulating rights and privileges of the Partner and Institute;
- Host government support and pre-approval for projects; and
- Strict protection of business confidential information.[44]
The ISTC describes succinctly the process followed in the Partner Program, which is identical to the process followed by the STCU:
"Partners are introduced to the ISTC by the Party on whose territory the Partner is located. Following introduction, Partners are encouraged to work with ISTC project managers and with [former Soviet] institutes to develop technical proposals and terms for participation in projects. Summary information on new Partner proposals is reviewed and approved by the ISTC for adherence to ISTC goals; Partners may also choose to fund previously approved standard proposals. Terms and conditions for participation in Partner projects are codified in Partner Project Agreements signed by the [former Soviet] institute, Partner, and the ISTC."[45]
As of November 4, 2002, the ISTC lists 166 partnering organizations, including notable corporations such as 3M, BASF, Bayer, Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Hitachi, Lockheed Martin, Samsung, as well as U.S. Government agencies such as the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.[46] Seventeen of those 166 organizations are also listed on the STCU list, in addition to the 55 partners that are only on the STCU list.[47]
Interest in the Partner Program has clearly been expanding. In 1997, there were only about 20 Partner Program projects funded at $5 million between the ISTC and STCU combined.[48] By 2001, the ISTC alone approved 104 projects under the Partner Program, representing nearly $31 million in new funding.[49] At Governing Board meetings April 2002 and October 2002, the ISTC announced the approval of 104 additional projects for $43.3 million.[50]
As noted above, a quarter of all funds contributed to ISTC projects, or roughly $120 million, have come under the Partner Program. There has been a much heavier focus of Partner Program projects in biotechnology and life sciences than in the Science Project Program: nearly half of all Partner projects, or $56 million have gone to such projects.
U.S. Oversight. A serious concern with the Science Centers effort from its onset has been that recipient scientists and their institutes might not actually do the work for which they were being paid, or might charge for time that was not worked. Indeed, U.S. oversight of the two Science Centers and their grants was the subject of a 2001 U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation.[51] To ensure that U.S. funds are not used inappropriately, the State Department relies on a multi-layered system that includes the ISTC and STCU Secretariat staff, the U.S. Defense Contract Audit Agency, and external audits of the ISTC and STCU by international auditing firms.[52]
GAO described the first layer, the work by the ISTC and STCU Secretariat staff to oversee the daily operations of funded projects:
"The science center staff do not observe the scientists on a day-to-day basis but rather (1) conduct on-site technical and financial monitoring at least once during each project, (2) review financial and technical reports submitted by the scientists, and (3) have frequent contacts with project scientists and receive input from U.S. and other western scientists who collaborate on the projects."[53]
The on-site visits include confidential interviews with project and other institute staff, inspection of institute timesheets, and observation of product results. Quarterly financial reports and quarterly, annual, and final technical reports must be submitted, and direct payments for scientists are withheld until the quarterly financial statements are received and reviewed. GAO concluded that the Secretariat staff was in fact carrying out their monitoring procedures.[54]
The State Department has also contracted the Defense Contracts Audit Agency (DCAA) to review the implementation of U.S. funded projects. In 1999 and 2000, for instance, DCAA auditors examined 84 projects in depth, including site visits to the host institutes.[55] Auditors must give the institutes 20-35 days advance notice, limiting somewhat the element of surprise, and auditors need not announce what equipment or scientists will be audited before they come.[56] Technical auditors from inside and outside the government have begun to accompany the DCAA auditors, to evaluate the projects' technical performance and whether the time reported would actually be needed to produce the technical work submitted.[57] DCAA auditors told GAO that while they did encounter some initial problems with scientists overcharging for time worked, they found that the Science Centers had instituted corrective measures and problems had lessened.[58] In addition, the ISTC and STCU Agreements allow the United States access and audit rights to the institutes, scientists, and documentation up to two years after the project has finished. The United States, through the DCAA auditors, has in fact taken advantage of this right[59] In all, the auditing rights afforded the United States under the ISTC and STCU are among the best, if not the best, of all the threat reduction programs with the former Soviet Union.
Budget
See
budget table
The budgets of the ISTC and STCU reflect the multilateral nature of these threat reduction efforts. As of November 6, 2002, member nations and project partners have contributed $481 million towards ISTC projects. (This figure does not include contributions for those administrative expenses not directly associated with project grants, which are usually about 10 percent of total ISTC costs.)[60] The United States has contributed $171 million of the $481 million devoted to ISTC projects, or 36 percent.[61] The EU has contributed 27 percent, or $129 million; Japan, 12 percent, or $56 million; and South Korea and Norway, about $2 million each. Private business partners and other miscellaneous governmental and non-governmental contributors account for fully a quarter of project funding over the years.[62]
With the STCU, as of the beginning of 2002, member states and funding partners have contributed $60.5 million and 6.6 million Euros. [63] The United States has contributed a larger share to the STCU than to the ISTC: U.S. contributions were nearly $45 million out of the $60 million contributed in dollars.[64] The EU has contributed $3 million and 6 million Euros; Canada, $2.3 million. Private industry Partners have dedicated to $6 million and over 500,000 Euros.
Since 1992, the United States has appropriated $267 million directly for the Science Centers in Russia and Ukraine.[65] Initially, funding came out of the Department of Defense's Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Funding started with $25 million for the ISTC in Moscow sprinkled out over fiscal years (FY) 1992 to 1994, and $10 million for STCU in Ukraine in FY 1994. An additional $29 million came from the Department of Defense in FY 1995. The State Department took over full responsibility for funding in FY 1996. In the FY 2003 Bush administration proposal, the State Department displayed funding for the Science Centers combined with funding for the State Department's "Bio Redirection" program, a coordinated interagency effort "similar to the Science Centers" to engage facilities associated with the former Soviet Union's biological weapons program.[66] If continued, this policy will make it more difficult to understand exactly how much support is being given to the Science Center effort as a whole, as opposed to the specific interactions with select biological institutes.
As noted earlier, several U.S. Government agencies have made use of the Centers' Partner Program by supporting individual projects to accomplish activities authorized by that program's appropriation. According to GAO, from 1994 through March 2001, these agencies — primarily the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and Defense — spent $25.4 million on Science Center projects.[67] While beneficial to the Science Centers' goals, these activities would not be possible were they not serving the goals set out by the legislation authorizing that funding. Because of this (and because it is virtually impossible to track these small interagency transfers if one is not inside the government) this funding is not included in the total displayed here.
Key Issues and Recommendations
Is it working? It is a simple question to ask, but a tougher question to answer. The overarching goal of the program is simple: to reduce, if not eliminate, the likelihood that WMD expertise developed in the former Soviet Union would leak out to states or terrorists pursuing WMD. Currently, the State Department and the Science Centers refer to the number of scientists “engaged” and the numbers of work-days devoted to funded projects as the proof that they are having an impact. Certainly, time spent by scientists who possess WMD expertise working on peaceful projects is time that cannot be spent on a project of proliferation concern — and funds from the ISTC can alleviate the desperation that could tempt scientists to sell their knowledge.
But as GAO pointed out in its 2001 report, there is simply not enough money to pay full time salaries to enough scientists to solve the problem.[68] Instead, State Department officials see their efforts as a way to redirect talented scientists into sustainable careers in private industry, or, at least, prop up scientists’ fortunes enough for long enough that they are not tempted by to engage in proliferation-sensitive cooperation.
In addition, program officials argue that the carrot of potentially steady research funding to support institutes’ finances, along with steady engagement by Science Center officials with institute management and scientists, will draw those institutes more and more securely into the Western orbit and prevent them from moving toward cooperation with proliferating states and WMD terrorists. Unfortunately, right now there is very little hard data to document this argument.
- Recommendation: The State Department should collect and analyze detailed information about the characteristics of all participants in U.S. funded projects. The Science Centers already require information on participants in Science Center projects in order to ensure that they should not be ruled out for past engagement in proliferation, and for reviews of such matters as the seniority and particular weapons expertise of the scientists involved in the projects. However, GAO notes that the State Department relies on the scientists’ national governments to certify that the senior weapons scientists listed as participants in a project proposal actually have sufficient expertise to pose a proliferation risk.
- Recommendation: The State Department should seek to survey project alumni in order to see if participation in the Science Centers program is associated with improvements in those scientists’ situations, and their attitudes about cooperation with the West and with proliferating states. State Department officials already say that they maintain "continuing contact" with scientists and their institutes, "even if those scientists are not actively participating in a current Science Center activity."[69] But there has been no systematic effort to survey participants in Science Center projects to determine, for example, how their finances, attitudes of desperation or pessimism, and willingness to consider working for the military programs of a foreign power compare to those of non-participants in Science Center projects.[70]
- Recommendation: Just as important as comprehensively collecting and analyzing more detailed information about participating scientists and institutes is making that information available to policymakers outside the Science Centers program office in the State Department. It may be that program officials have much of this data on hand and are using it, but little in the way of hard data makes it out of the program. Having tangible evidence about who is participating in the program and how it is changing their situation is critical for State Department program officials to evaluate how well the program is working, and it is essential for other policymakers to justify giving the program the support that program officials think it deserves.
- Recommendation: State Department officials should clarify which types of scientists are currently perceived to pose the most significant threats. Are they old or young? How long have they been working at their institute? Or should the Science Centers be more worried about whole institutes pursuing, or at least sanctioning, work with proliferating states? The Science Centers program was praised in the Bush administration review of nonproliferation assistance programs in Russia, but the nature of the problem is constantly changing as time passes, and the Science Centers need to be very clear about how they intend to solve that problem.
Permanent Redirection. The preeminent focus of the Science Centers is their program of short-term grants to support civilian research by weapons scientists. Eleven years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is clear that the focus of international efforts on these issues has to shift from short-term to long-term — toward permanent, sustainable redirection of weapons scientists to civilian work. This poses two challenges: how to build a path for these weapons experts from subsidized fixed-period research grants to sustainable employment without foreign subsidies, and how to ensure that scientists really are being redirected from weapons work, and not just using their Science Center grants to subsidize their continuing weapons work. (As GAO noted, a substantial number of scientists work part-time on Science Center-funded projects, while continuing to spend the majority of their time working in Russia's weapons complex. This is more of an issue for nuclear, missile, and conventional weapons experts, whose weapons work continues to be needed, than for biological and chemical scientists, whose weapons work — except for defensive applications — is entirely prohibited.) The Science Centers should continue and expand their efforts to help scientists build from their Science Center grants toward sustainable non-subsidized employment. This should include working with other U.S. and international programs, such as the Initiatives for Proliferation and the Nuclear Cities Initiative, that have complementary approaches focused on matching technologies with commercial firms, and assisting with infrastructure for new businesses.
- Recommendation: The governments supporting the Science Centers should work with the Russian government and the other recipient state governments to make the case for these governments to expand their own funding support for civilian research and development in their countries -- providing a path toward sustainable work for scientists whose work is not directly commercializable.
- Recommendation: The governments supporting the Science Centers should work with the Russian government and the other recipient state governments to reduce the fraction of scientists working on Science Center projects who also continue to do weapons work. The Science Centers should work to ensure that information is provided not only on the weapons background of the scientists participating in Science Center projects, but also on their current activities — and funding governments, including the United States, can then choose to de-emphasize funding for projects whose participants continue to spend a large fraction of their time on weapons work. The idea that Science Center grants are part of a permanent transition away from weapons work for their participants should become an increasing part of the ethos of the program. As part of that, consideration should be given, in cases where this seems appropriate, to lengthening the term of the grants — since it is difficult to convince some one to give up a permanent, secure weapons job for a grant that only lasts a year or two.
- Recommendation: The U.S. government and other governments participating in the Science Centers should consider establishing, as a complement to the Science Centers, a program to help Russia "buy out" older weapons scientists, providing subsidies so that weapons scientists can retire with a guaranteed pension that will keep them from desperation.[71] While Russia would have to finance much of the cost of such an effort, there are precedents for "transition assistance" in the form of grants or loans for helping workers who retire or are laid off as an industry declines. This might be one attractive focus for expenditures from a fund created as part of a debt-for-nonproliferation swap, or for expenditures from revenue from spent fuel imports.[72]
Working with the other stabilization efforts. The Science Centers are part of a broader U.S. and international effort focused on stabilizing the WMD experts of the former Soviet Union. The Department of Energy operates the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI) and the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) also to move former WMD scientists and institutes to long-term peaceful activities. Department of State and Energy officials argue that the Science Centers focus on basic R&D efforts, IPP focuses on supporting efforts to commercialize promising R&D projects, and NCI focuses on moving existing enterprises in the closed nuclear cities into private, non-weapons activities. However, Science Centers program officials state that they are shifting their efforts to ensure long-term stabilization of scientists and institutes, and they tout the success of the Partner Program that brings in private industry to support basic and applied R&D efforts. The trends described above suggest that the Science Centers effort is encroaching more and more onto the stated program area of the IPP.
- Recommendation: Rather than simply continuing to describe their goals as mutually reinforcing yet still overlapping, program officials at the Department of State and Energy should work to outline a division of labor that maximizes the effectiveness of the total package of U.S. and international programs. In particular, for any given project, they should clearly delineate the reasons why it is best to handle it through one or the other program. Over time, they should work to establish demonstrable evidence that maintaining these separate efforts is more effective than applying the same resources to a consolidated effort focused on one or two of these programs.
Access. As GAO pointed out, project proposals must win host government approval before being submitted to the Science Centers for funding.[73] While access and auditing rights for the Science Centers are the among the best of all cooperative programs to control nuclear warheads and materials, they still cannot cooperative with those institutes deemed off limits by the host government. Indeed, some institutes appear to have been unable to gain government permission to submit proposals, perhaps because of those rigorous access and auditing requirements of the Science Cent