Thank you for downloading our history program, Witness with me, Louise Adago.

One of the legacies of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the Soviet's huge nuclear weapons

program, and in particular concerns about the largely abandoned nuclear test site

that semi-Palatintz, in Kazakhstan. A huge secret operation by American and Russian

scientists to make that site secure has been called the greatest nuclear non-proliferation

story never told. I've been talking to one of the scientists at the heart of that

operation, Dr Siegfried Hecker, former director of the biggest of his lifetime.

This was uncharted territory.

Something like this had never happened,

where a world power with the ability to destroy the entire world just collapsed.

As Director of Los Angeles, entire world just collapsed.

As director of Los Alamos, Sig Hecker knew what was at stake.

The Soviet Union had more nuclear weapons even than America.

We don't know exactly how many weapons,

but it was somewhere around 39,000 nuclear weapons

and maybe 1.4 million kilograms of highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

So the principal concern at that time

was who was going to control the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons.

How do you make sure that you safeguard against possible attempts of

theft, possible terrorist attacks at a time when Russia was going through

economic chaos.

American nuclear scientists had already had contacts with their Russian counterparts.

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