Thomas Neff is a name few people have heard of, and yet his accomplishment over many years must rank among the most significant of the 20th century; he was almost singlehandedly responsible for ridding the world of one third of its nuclear warheads.
Thomas Neff died this past July at the age of 80. His young years were spent in Portland, Oregon during the era of the Cold War when schools regularly practiced “Duck and Cover” drills, which were supposed to provide protection from a Soviet nuclear attack by getting students to hide under their desks. As ridiculous as that drill actually was, it left a lasting impression on Thomas Neff.
In 1991, he was participating in the first arms-control agreement between Russia and the U.S. He realized that the two sides were talking past each other. The breakup of the Soviet Union meant Russia was broke and didn’t even have money to pay its workers in the nuclear plants, much less pay anyone to dismantle nuclear weapons. The Americans were afraid some Russian workers might try and sell nuclear warheads to rogue regimes like Iran or North Korea. The result of the talks was stalemate.
Thomas Neff came up with an idea that was not based on politics, or diplomacy, but on pure economics. Russia was desperate for hard cash and the U.S. needed uranium to power its domestic nuclear power plants. Neff proposed that, if the Russians diluted the highly enriched uranium in their nuclear warheads down to commercial grade – by adding more natural uranium – the U.S. could “buy” it with trade credits. The time was right, and uranium prices were “soft”.
Neff proposed that the U.S. purchase of Russian uranium be done slowly so the market wasn’t flooded and, over two decades, it worked. By 2013, when the last of 250 shipments of Russian uranium arrived in Baltimore, more than 20,000 Russian nuclear warheads had been eliminated, which was around one-third of the peak global number.
The Russians earned $17 billion in credits for food and other essentials, and the U.S. received 15,000 tons of low-enriched uranium, which was enough to power the entire U.S, for two years.
Thomas Neff’s efforts were a little “James Bondish”. He waited in the corridor of that nuclear disarmament conference to waylay Russia’s Deputy Minister of the Soviet Atomic Energy Ministry, Viktor Mikhailov. Dr. Neff asked Mikhailov if he had any uranium for sale. “How much” came the reply. “500 tons”, said Neff. “I think I can do it”, replied Mikhailov. After that conversation Neff always thought he should have asked for 700 tons, but 500 was better than nothing both from the supply of uranium to the U.S. nuclear plants and the reduction in the world’s arsenal of nuclear warheads.
There were lots of hiccups along the way, with many officials on both sides trying to sabotage the idea. Those hiccups involved many trips by Neff to Russia to smooth things over, and many more trips around the U.S. to convince almost everyone that he was not working as a spy for the Russians. Paranoia was everywhere – even the U.S. nuclear power industry initially refused to use Russian uranium because they thought it was unpatriotic and supporting the enemy. Thomas Neff persisted. He basically worked alone – he hated government meetings – and he worked quietly, and mostly one-on-one. He even bought a suit for the first time in his life.
More or less alone, he turned, as he said, “Megatons into Megawatts” and, in the process, he moved nuclear mountains.
This blog was taken from an obituary, published by The Economist magazine, and I just thought the story demanded as much publicity as possible for an extraordinary man.
