ENRICO FERMI AWARD Remarks by Richard L. Garwin on receiving the ENRICO FERMI AWARD July 24, 1997 Thank you, Mr. Secretary. The Enrico Fermi Award celebrates past achievements, but we need also to move ahead with the opportunities of the post-Cold-War world. Here are three: First, in January the U.S. Government announced its decision to dispose of its excess bomb plutonium from stocks and dismantled nuclear weapons BOTH by incorporating a portion of it with the radioactive wastes being converted into durable glass for underground storage AND by using a portion of it for fuel in U.S. power reactors. As one of the five U.S. members of an Independent Scientific Commission created by Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin, I urge that we move without delay to carry out this decision and thus reduce the serious hazard that this material, particularly Russian material, will end up in nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists or of nations thirsting for nuclear weaponry. Second, in carrying out its obligation to maintain U.S. nuclear weapons reliable, safe, and secure, the Department of Energy needs every few years or every decade to refresh the supply of tritium in each nuclear weapon. Because active-duty U.S. nuclear weapons have been reduced in number over this decade and the next much more rapidly than the loss of tritium by radioactive decay (50% every 12 years), there has been and until the year 2010 or so there will be more than enough tritium available for this purpose without the manufacture of new tritium. DOE has programs to develop a powerful particle accelerator to recreate tritium from its helium ashes, and one to produce tritium in power reactors. Billions of dollars would be saved by choosing the reactor route, and that should be perfected and held in reserve. But the opportunity is really the purchase of tritium from Russia, which I understand is ready to sell it at a small fraction of the cost to the U.S. of even reactor production. No impairment of U.S. security can result, if tritium is acquired 5 years before it is needed; if the supply is cut off, there is thus time to begin domestic production. And if Russian and U.S. nuclear weapons are reduced from the 10,000 we plan to hold under current agreements, we will save not only major capital expenditure but also the cost of tritium purchase. Third, the U.S. is purchasing 500 tons of Russian bomb uranium ("high enriched uranium"--HEU) over 20 years, blended down as low-enriched power reactor fuel useless for nuclear weapons; deliveries began about two years ago. The HEU awaiting delivery is directly usable to make some 20,000 nuclear weapons. We could eliminate this hazard of nuclear proliferation to terrorists or weapon-thirsty states by paying Russia to blend all this HEU now to 20% U-235 (also useless for nuclear weapons), and to receive a credit for this payment when we take delivery of the reactor fuel further blended down to 4.4% U-235. I know that many of my colleagues in the scientific, technical, and foreign policy communities are ready to help realize these opportunities. RLG:jah:W205EFA:072497.EFA