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The ultimate in sustainability…

In Ukraine and Russia, two international centres are ‘recycling’ Cold War nuclear scientists to work on sustainability projects
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It’s 1991 — the Cold War is over. Two years earlier, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down amidst cheers and tears in Germany and a collective global sigh.

East-West tensions had hung over the world like a black fog since the end of World War II. But with them finally easing under Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in the White House (who famously exhorted Gorbachev in Berlin to “tear down this wall”), nuclear disarmament and dismantling facilities are set up by the western world in the former Soviet empire.

Soviet nuclear arms production had reached its peak, with about 45,000 weapons stockpiled, about the same time Reagan and Gorbachev were holding their first discussions.

But even with East-West relations warming, what would happen to the tens of thousands of scientists who had designed and built these weapons and ensured they were operational?

Concern in the West ran high. As the Soviet Union collapsed and the economy and population were left in shambles under Yeltsin’s “shock therapy” to instantly reform the Communist economy into a free market one, the western world feared that the scientists who had worked on the former Soviet nuclear weapons and military systems would “disappear”. They might even be lured into working for “rogue” states such as Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Libya, for when people are hungry and can’t feed their families, they might do anything.

So in 1993, the United States, the newly formed European Union and Canada started the International Science and Technology Centre in Moscow. Later, a sister organization, the Science and Technology Centre (STCU) was set up in Kiev, Ukraine. About 50 people work in the two centres.

The goal was to harness the knowledge and expertise of these scientists — 70,000 of them in Russia and 20,000 in Ukraine — by working through the large network of approximately 1,000 scientific institutions in the former USSR and linking them to productive, high-tech, civilian-based projects in the West.

FROM BEHIND THE “IRON CURTAIN” TO OUR BACK DOOR

The concept of moving from Cold War weaponry to sustainability landed close to home in March at the GLOBE 2008 conference held in Vancouver.

If you managed to get through the throng surrounding their booth at the GLOBE trade fair, you could have shaken hands with one of the 16 scientists from the STCU in Kiev. If you had a sustainable project you needed some help developing — cleaning up oil-polluted soils, perhaps, or developing synthetic diesel from organic waste — you likely would have gotten into a long conversation and exchanged business cards.

“GLOBE was definitely very successful. We made lots of contacts,” says Victor Korsun, STCU’s deputy director for the U.S., from his hotel room in downtown Vancouver. “The scientists had many meetings and are very pleased. In fact, they say this is one of the better events they have gone to.”

Delegates at GLOBE 2008 were interested in working with the Ukrainian scientists on a variety of projects such as oil remediation and recovery as well as water purification using bioreactives (biological-type materials that enhance a process for cleaning water from various industrial processes). The scientist who has become an expert in biofuels and biomass was particularly busy fielding queries, including one to work with a First Nations group interested in using wood waste from forestry operations for energy production.

So why would an entrepreneur or business person interested in developing a sustainable product or initiative choose to work with former Cold War weaponry scientists, over, say a local university’s R&D department?

“These are not university individuals,” says Korsun. “These are people who do more than research — they move things from the research stage into prototype development and often into pilot production. They’ll do industrial scale-up and so forth.

“The scientific institutes in Ukraine and the other countries of the former Soviet Union were extensive. It was a large network that was geared toward the military, of course. They were expected to solve problems and move things to being able to use them, so they are very capable along those lines.”

It’s not only the West that benefits from the application of this expertise for advancing productive, sustainable projects. With the SCTU and ISTC acting as administrative organizations, over the past 12 years US$160 billion has been funneled into the network of institutes and scientists in the Russian Federation and Ukraine. About 60 per cent of the financial support comes from the U.S., 25 per cent from the EU and 10 per cent from Canada, through our Department of Foreign Affairs. Funding is based on the proposals that the scientists submit.

“The difficulties (the institutes) have is a lack of equipment and obsolete equipment — all of these things have been neglected,” says Korsun. “We can’t help them with the facilities, so we help them some with equipment purchases, and we get a lot of them up to some stage where they can promote themselves.”

It also helps bring the institutes and scientists up to speed in terms of what western markets and scientific communities are working on, and to begin to integrate them into the international community, because they had been completely isolated from the West.

“The Soviet scientists knew nothing about what was going on here,” he says. “They certainly didn’t have the equipment — computers, for example. Even now they are only just beginning to have computers on their desktops.”

The work of the STCU and ISTC also helps to break down stereotypes on both sides, building bridges and connections and opening up perspectives.

“They were taught that we (in the West) were monsters — and even these brief visits that we sponsor to these exhibitions show them what the West is like. When we went to Germany last year for a very large exhibition, the scientists were just astounded at what they saw in terms of technologies that were at this particular show,” he adds.

“They said to me, you know, you ought to bring the people from eastern Ukraine, who are more pro-Russian, to such shows because they don’t know anything about this.”

AND FROM NONPROLIFERATION TO GREEN

While the STCU and ISTC have moved into the commercialization of “green” projects, it wasn’t their mandate from the start.

Initially, the goal was strictly nonproliferation (“Nonproliferation through science cooperation” reads the tagline on the ISTC’s annual report for 2006) — finding a way to keep the scientists in place and not have them disperse, while giving them credible work to do. Then as the centres got rolling, they realized that commercial companies were interested in working behind the former Iron Curtain. But, according to Korsun, the political and economic risks were too high.

“So commercial companies were actually asking to participate through the centres. That was when we opened up and started partner projects,” he says.

Only companies from the funding countries are allowed to work through the two centres. In 2006, 182 projects were supported at a cost of some US$50.6 million at the ISTC alone.

Three years ago sustainability was made an additional goal — a natural outcome from the centres’ previous work and a good business case, given the need for more and more sustainable technologies worldwide. It was also a goal that pleases the scientists, who “are ecstatic about what they are doing.”

At this point Korsun, who is a former U.S.-based research scientist with expertise in commercialization, patenting, business development and technology transfer, was brought on board to help with things such as international patents and licensing. His ultimate goal is to develop joint ventures in Ukraine based on manufacturing.

“Because with manufacturing comes jobs, and that’s the kind of thing all of our countries need more of, is high tech-type jobs,” he says.

“In some cases they are already producing small quantities, but the difficulty is they don’t have the money and capital investment to be able to do larger scale productions and buy automated equipment and assets even though they are quite capable of doing that.”

Ideally, technology transfer would be part of the process, with the high-tech production set up in Ukraine or Russia. Canadian, European or U.S. managers or teams would then go over there to guide them with their expertise, and to ensure that western standards are met.

The equipment would be designed and built in the former Soviet Union, just as missiles and nuclear warheads used to be, but it would eventually be shipped over to Canada or other western nations and installed on site for use in whatever sustainable, productive civilian project it was intended for — generating biofuels, renewable energy, medical sciences or whatever. That way the repository of high tech expertise and know-how for productive purposes, along with new assets, would grow in the former USSR while western businesses gain an advantage.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN THE DOORS CLOSE?

At the same time, the ISTC and STCU are also encouraging the institutes they work with to become more self-reliant and look for their own international high-tech business partners and funding from other sources.

“Ultimately, this program will not last forever,” Korsun says. “Because if one took it to its extreme, all the weapons scientists will eventually die off.

“As well, other priorities are certainly creeping in with each of the western countries, especially the U.S. with the Iraq war — so funding is becoming an issue, even though it is not a great deal, overall, for the type of mission that we do.

“But they realize that they need to be thinking of the end game, and what are they going to do when they decide to close the doors.”

For more information on the International Science and Technology Centre go to: www.istc.ru

The Science & Technology Centre in Ukraine does not have its own web site.

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who tracks the latest in sustainable initiatives.



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