It gives me great pleasure to pen a few words for this Closed Nuclear Cities/Centres Partnership Newsletter. The human dimension
aspects of nuclear non-proliferation partnership is one of the most difficult areas of the UK Global Threat Reduction Programme and
yet one of the most successful.
CNCP owes its success to the commitment, willingness to cooperate and sheer hard work of many people across the Former Soviet
Union (FSU) as well as the expert and experienced CNCP team in the UK and Moscow. The fact that the UK has similarly gone through
the process of defence industry downsizing and restructuring Government funded laboratories has been helpful, in that we can discuss
and share this experience. The CNCP programme is on course to create some 3,000 sustainable jobs in the various former weapons
establishments by 2012 associated with a wide range of commercial businesses across the FSU. Some of this work is also being used to
good effect for scientist engagement work in Libya with potential for other countries too. CNCP has also had a major influence on
the scientist redirection and engagement work recently implemented by a number of other Global Partnership countries.
As many are aware, I retired as Programme Director for the UK’s Threat Reduction Programme at the end of September 2008 after
some seven years establishing, implementing and directing a portfolio of non proliferation programmes encompassing nuclear safety,
nuclear security, scientist redirection and engagement, nuclear submarine dismantling, including making Spent Nuclear Fuel from
power plants, nuclear submarines and icebreakers, safe and secure. I very much enjoyed working with colleagues across the Former
Soviet Union on our joint goal of ensuring the nuclear legacy of the Cold War is removed as quickly as possible, while ensuring
safety and security of the legacy was not compromised, and our joint work is seen as creating sustainable, long term solutions
across the programme. However, I am aware more than most that there is still a good deal of work to complete before we can be
certain we have addressed all the priorities identified at the start of the Global Partnership at the Canadian G8 summit in 2002.
This work is likely to continue well beyond 2012 and will still require the input from many states to share their technical
expertise and lessons learnt from completed projects and programmes.
I have been fortunate that, although retired from government service, I have been given the opportunity to undertake a couple of
research projects over the next two years aimed at evaluating the impact of the Global Partnership and identifying potential future
priorities that still require an international collaboration and the sort of partnerships that have made the CNCP so successful. I
hope that some of those recommendations and conclusions relevant to CNCP will appear in future CNCP Newsletters.
Until then, retired, but still in business Dr Alan Heyes, OBE Former Programme Director, UK Global Threat Reduction Programme
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