Let’s return to the story of the Russian scientist who revealed the secret of the H bomb. In an earlier post, I explained how, in 1976, “The New York Times” reported that Soviet scientists had made a fusion breakthrough using electron beams. None of the physics of this Russian breakthrough had been revealed. The scientific community was anticipating some sort of an announcement at an upcoming conference; however, the big disclosure actually began on a beach in Santa Barbara, California three months after “The New York Times” ran the story. Lyonid Rudakov, my colleague and friend from the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, and I sat on the sand in a hastily arranged, totally private and completely unexplained meeting at high noon.

Rudakov had asked me to meet him. On the way to “the secret meeting,” I wondered if this was some scene from one of those spy movies. We sat there in silence, and then Rudakov reached for a twig and drew a simple figure in the sand beginning with an empty cone, much like an ice cream cone without ice cream. Then he added a thin curved layer. He explained that the drawing was of a conical indentation in a lead plate. Then he explained that there was an outer shell composed of a thin gold layer, curved in a spherical shape. Inside of that was a thin plastic shell containing thermonuclear fuel. The outer shell was heated by the tightly-focused electron beam and when it became sufficiently hot, the inner shell was heated by radiation. The thin inner shell then imploded into the conical shape, compressing and heating the thermonuclear fuel and producing a reaction output consisting of a pulse of about 1 million fusion neutrons.  My jaw fell open. My friend, a Soviet scientist, was revealing the secret and extremely closely-held concept of radiation-driven fusion weapons.

That evening Rudakov was scheduled to give a paper describing his work, and I, representing the competing U.S. program, was to introduce him at the after-dinner meeting at the Gordon Conference. Conferences such as that were low key opportunities for scientists to share unpublished work. The conference rule was that the information shared be held until a real publication was released. Rudakov must have known that what he planned to share was certain to shock many of the attendees who were from nuclear weapon labs, and I guessed that he did not want to surprise me that evening in front of the crowd.  For some reason I never understood, Rudakov had received permission to reveal this radiation-driven concept as essential to his use of electron beams to ignite a fusion reaction. He was prepared to share his results widely during his visit to the U.S.

In the following days, Rudakov went on to visit U.S. nuclear weapon labs and deliver the same talk, but by then, the government had warned anybody involved not to repeat anything. The FBI followed up by confiscating the blackboards used in the presentations. Rudakov was rather casual about the entire episode, but he did make one serious request during his visit to the United States. He wanted me to know that I needed to help him with a desperate problem. I wondered if that scene from that imagined spy movie was about to take place. I was in for a shock.

Rudakov explained that he wanted to buy a pair of blue jeans. He could not return to Moscow without the garment that was impossible to get in Russia.  I was relieved that I was not involved in some mystery, and took him to the local shopping mall. We went to several stores, with a variety of options and different prices.  Rudakov looked confused. He asked me why there was not just one price determined by the government. He could not cope with the free market concept and went away empty-handed. He was obviously disturbed by this interaction with the American economy.

At the same time, Rudakov never seemed to realize the swirling controversy he had created in the nuclear weapons community. His disclosure was a major development in fusion research. The fact that the Russian experiment had been revealed, but not explained, caused quite a stir. Earlier, “The New York Times” had only whetted the appetite of its physics readers, but nobody knew about the use of a radiation-driven implosion. A few months later, the entire event became the talk of the physics world. One widely accepted science magazine ran the headline: “Thermonuclear Fusion: U.S. Puts Wraps on Latest Soviet Work.”

Rudakov was anxious to spread the word that they were going ahead with building a giant electron beam machine that would cost 50 million rubles and would supposedly achieve fusion ignition. Scientists who did not know the secret of the H bomb were bewildered. The reason for the secrecy was not that the U.S. government was worried about classified information leaking out to the Soviets, but that the Soviet secrets would leak out to others. One scientist commented, “The work at Sandia was classified but the same work in the Soviet Union was unclassified.” Everyone involved was faced with mind numbing contradictions.

One thing was clear however: the Soviets were ready to race with us. I knew that their creation and advertising of a competition would help them enhance the credibility of their program help them obtain funding for further research. Of course that would not be so bad for us either.  The race really had become well-known three years before at the fusion conference in Moscow. At that 1973 meeting, Rudakov had announced they were embarking on a program to achieve fusion using electron beams to heat a BB sized spherical pellet filled with thermonuclear fuel. He neglected to mention the radiation drive. He claimed then that a few million joules would have to be deposited in the heavy metal shell of the pellet in a pulse of a few nanoseconds. The requirement was for a beam of 1000 trillion watts, and the highest power machine that they had was only 1 trillion watts. Their plan was to build a machine only in the 100 trillion watts range. Now, the use of a radiation-driven thin shell seemed to explain the contradiction. The breakthrough was the radiation-driven implosion.  It now appeared that the much lower power level would be useful using a low density, thin-walled target driven by radiation. They had neglected to mention that in 1973.

I should point out that was more to this competition than innovative physics, but in the U.S. we had the advantage of our ability to rapidly exploit modern technology that was driven by our free market economy and development of technology. Rudakov had an economics lesson trying to buy jeans, but he was not alone in learning about the economics of his competing country. The Moscow meeting was held at the giant Moscow University built in Stalinist style in the 1950s. I will never forget the giant ornate auditorium where I made my presentation. I also remember the food at the cafeteria.  I never resolved the mystery of that strange fruit-like liquid substance. I ate it, but I still wonder what it was.

I was staying at the enormous, slightly rundown Rossiya hotel overlooking Red Square, advertised as the largest hotel in the world. It was a fairly cold June and they had disconnected the heat for the summer. The hotel’s elevator operator, a nice old Russian grandmother who spoke no English, seemed rather disturbed when I complained to her in my version of broken Russian/English about the temperature in my room. I rubbed my body to demonstrate how cold I was. Apparently, she didn’t conclude I wanted an extra blanket, but rather another, more intimate, source of warmth. I tried not to feel insulted when she laughed vigorously in response.

I also had time to walk over to the giant Gum department store looking for some souvenirs to take home. I found long lines of depressed looking, shabbily dressed people and totally empty counters. I also found a nearby store for tourists that only accepted American money. The so-called Beryozka had a fantastic collection of Russian folk art including beautiful amber jewelry and the obligatory Matryoshka dolls. I discovered a fine woven tapestry that cost $73, the equivalent to 150 rubles. It hangs on my wall today and is pictured in the image accompanying this blog post. I was continually impressed with the creativity, the culture and the scientific discipline of the Soviets, but found their ability to develop commercial products and technology applications seemed to be frozen in the past, just like the architecture of Moscow University.

At the meeting in Moscow, we announced the results of our similar electron beam fusion program and claimed ignition would be possible at only 100 trillion watts based on our concept of an electromagnetically stopped relativistic electron beam. We were planning to build a machine we called the Electron Beam Fusion Accelerator or EBFA. When I told my Russian colleagues that the machine was called EBFA, they intentionally mispronounced the acronym to sound like a Russian insult that went with the Russian word for mother.

Nobody had a clue for a concept of a 1000 trillion watts electron beam accelerator, so both teams worked on other ideas for power multiplication or new ideas to reduce the theoretical power requirement. The threat of violating classification rules in effect put a break on not just implementing, but even thinking about any concepts involving radiation-driven implosions. I wondered if we had already lost the race. As it turned out, we responded with our new invention that I will explain in my next post, part 3 and the last installment of this true story.