Chelyabinsk-70. Gamaleya. Arzamas-16. These names may elicit chills in people familiar with former Soviet secret nuclear cities and the clandestine Biopreparat - forbidding facilities where Russian scientists developed some of the deadliest Cold War weapons. Today, these institutes have opened their doors - and their expertise - to business partnerships with U.S. industry to develop advanced detection technologies for protecting and saving lives.

IPP Helps Build Business Partnerships

Hundreds of U.S.-Russian high-technology partnerships have been sponsored by Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP), a program of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). IPP helps transition Russia’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons projects to civilian ventures and, in the process, reduces the risk of WMD proliferation and strengthens global security. Currently, IPP supports over 130 projects, with more than two dozen in three of Russia’s ten nuclear cities.

Market Demand for Detection Technologies

In the post-9/11 world, many new U.S.-Russian commercial ventures are trying to meet heightened demands for detection technologies useful for homeland security and counter-terrorism. Three IPP-supported detection technologies close to market introduction are rapid action bacteria detectors, “smart bolts” able to report tampering, and radar-equipped robots able to detect lethal metal and plastic landmines.

Bacterial Bio-Hazards: Using recombinant techniques with enzymes extracted from a native Russian firefly, scientific teams at the Gamaleya Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology and Moscow State University have created two reagents that glow in the presence of bacteria. The new “red” and “green” synthetic Luciferin-Luciferase reagents are valuable additions to detection methods for screening and elimination of bacteria and toxins in food, fuel, air and water supplies. U.S. partner New Horizons Diagnostics Corporation of Columbia, Md., will incorporate the "red" reagent in its existing PROFILE® 1 Bioluminometer, a hand-held instrument that determines the presence of low levels of bacteria in less than five minutes. NHD expects the enhanced PROFILE® 1 to be an important tool for first responders in the event of a bio-terror attack.

Land Mines: The EDIT land mine Detector, a unique combination of Russian radar technology with a Mars Rover-like robot able to identify and image plastic and metal land mines, will reduce the need for precarious minesweeping by hand or trained dogs.

 The radar system was developed by NIIIS (Institute for Measuring Systems Research) in Nizhny Novgorod. Engineers from Stolar Horizon in Raton, N. Mex., recognized its potential for multiple applications in detection, including imaging of underground structures and geologic anomalies.

Materials Protection: Standard surveillance systems are now bolstered by the addition of “smart bolt” technology, a sealing and bolting system featuring computer chips able to sense and report any attempts to open or move the material. These tamper-indicating devices have been developed by VNIIEF (All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics), also known as Arzamas-16, Russia’s leading nuclear facility in the closed city of Sarov, together with Canberra Aquila of Albuquerque, N. Mex. Using radio-frequency communication, “smart bolts” allow operators to interrogate the bolt from a remote location.

The respective DOE national lab partners on these projects are Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and the NNSA Kansas City Plant. The U.S. partners belong to the U.S. Industry Coalition (USIC), a nonprofit, membership association of American companies participating in the IPP program.