Russian Scientist Helped Nuclear Program?

 

 

The November 8, 2011 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards report on Iran identifies a foreign expert that may have been important to Iran’s development of implosion detonation systems used in nuclear weapons. The Agency writes in the report that it has “strong indications that the development by Iran of the high explosives initiation system, and its development of the high speed diagnostic configuration used to monitor related experiments, were assisted by the work of a foreign expert who was not only knowledgeable in these technologies, but who, a Member State has informed the Agency, worked for much of his career with this technology in the nuclear weapon programme of the country of his origin.”

 

Information in other IAEA documents reviewed by ISIS identifies this person as Vycheslav V. Danilenko¹.  Born in 1934, Danilenko worked in the nuclear weapon complex at VNIITF, Chelyabinsk-70 for three decades.  At VNIITF in the early 1960s, he was a member of the gas dynamics group and became involved in the study of the manufacture of synthetic diamonds. He worked with leading explosives experts in the Soviet nuclear weapons program and developed understanding of the fundamentals of detonation, including shock compression. In 1960, the head of VNIIF, B. I. Zababakhin, launched the institute’s research into the possibility of diamond synthesis by using the shock compression of graphite. Leading Soviet nuclear weapons experts were leaders in this effort in the early 1960s. In a recent book chapter Danilenko says that “experiments aimed at developing methods for synthesis were highly classified; for security reason, the results were initially contained only in secret reports from VNIITF.” According to IAEA officials, he likely had knowledge of the application of high explosives in the Soviet nuclear weapons program.  Given his background and experience, this ex-Soviet nuclear weapons expert was well versed in key aspects of developing nuclear weapons.

 

Danilenko also has experience in the important area of the diagnostics of high explosions. His publications include work on high-speed photography and describe optical techniques by which fiber optic cables are used to capture the time of arrival of explosive shock waves.

 

After leaving VNIITF in either 1989 or 1991, Danilenko moved to Ukraine and established the company ALIT in Kiev, producing ultra-dispersed diamonds (UDD or nanodiamonds). He experienced economic difficulties by the mid-1990s. According to the IAEA, he contacted the Iranian embassy in mid-1995, offering his expertise on UDD. At the end of the year, he was contacted by Dr. Seyed Abbas Shahmoradi, who headed the Physics Research Center and also worked at the Sharif University of Technology.  Danilenko signed a contract with Shahmoradi, according to IAEA documents. 

 

As head of Iran’s secret nuclear sector involved in the development of nuclear weapons, Shahmoradi would have undoubtedly recognized Danilenko’s value to an incipient nuclear weapons effort. Synthetic diamond production is unlikely to have been a priority, although it has obvious value as a cover story. In assessing the important contributions make by scientists and engineers to secret proliferant state nuclear programs, ISIS has not found any that did not initially offer other, more benign assistance that provided a plausible cover for their secret nuclear assistance.  In some cases, their intention was originally benign but they were lured by money to assist in sensitive nuclear areas.

 

According to the recent IAEA safeguards report, Danilenko worked in Iran from about 1996 until about 2002, “ostensibly to assist Iran in the development of a facility and techniques for making UDD, where he also lectured on explosion physics and its applications.”  He told the IAEA that he lectured and constructed an explosive firing cylinder which was not designed for experiments on spherical systems.  In 2002, he returned to Russia.

 

The IAEA has reviewed publications by Danilenko and has met with him. It has been able to verify through three separate sources, including the expert himself, that he was in Iran during that time.  Danilenko told the IAEA that he does not exclude that his information was used for other purposes. 

 

At the very least, Danilenko had reason to know or should have known exactly why the Iranians were interested in his research and expertise.  The IAEA information suggests he provided more than he has admitted.

 

 

The IAEA obtained additional information that adds credibility to the conclusion that Danilenko used his technical and practical knowledge and expertise to provide assistance to Iran’s program to develop a suitable initiation system for a nuclear explosive device. The IAEA assessed that a monitoring, or diagnostic, technique described in one of his papers had a remarkable similarity to one that the IAEA saw in material from a member state about a hemispherical initiation and explosives system developed in Iran (see below).  This system is also described in the IAEA safeguards report as a multipoint initiation system used to start the detonation of a nuclear explosive.

 

The system that the IAEA says Iran was developing prior to 2004 was relatively sophisticated and small in diameter. Iran is unlikely to have been able to design it on its own.  According to the November 2011 IAEA safeguards report, Iran is also believed to have obtained information from the A.Q. Khan network on nuclear weapons design. But the initiation and explosive system is sufficiently sophisticated that it points to a contribution from Danilenko.

 

The multipoint initiation system has a distributed array of explosive filled channels on an aluminum hemisphere which terminate at holes containing explosive pellets. The pellets simultaneously explode to initiate the entire outer surface of a high explosive component in hemispherical form. The experiments used a multitude of fiber optic cables and a high speed streak camera to measure the time of arrival of first light across the inner surface of an explosive component, thereby deducing the smoothness of the detonation front at this surface…

 

On November 10, 2011, Reuters reported on an interview with Danilenko by the Russian newspaper, Kommersant.  He reportedly stated to Kommersant, “I am not a nuclear physicist and am not the founder of the Iranian nuclear program.”  He reportedly refused to provide any additional information. It is not clear what questions Kommersant asked Danilenko, but the November IAEA safeguards report does not allege that Danilenko is a “founder” of Iran’s nuclear program, as the program pre-dates the start of his assistance to Iran in the mid-1990s.  Similarly, the IAEA never alleges that Danilenko is a nuclear physicist, but rather that he may have assisted Iran in the development of a spherical high explosives multipoint initiation system.  It remains for Danilenko to more fully explain his assistance to Iran.