On October 19, 1991, as the USSR teetered on the brink of collapse, American and Soviet delegations gathered in Washington, D.C., to discuss reducing the Soviet stockpile of nuclear warheads. During a break, MIT physicist Thomas Neff approached Viktor Mikhailov, head of the Soviet nuclear weapons complex, with an unconventional idea: What if the United States were to buy USSR uranium and use it to fuel American nuclear power plants? The deal would provide funds for the USSR and energy for the States, and keep the weapons-grade uranium from ending up in dangerous hands.
Photo: Courtesy Harris/Neff Family
“He believed in the persuasive power of the elegant idea,” wrote Neff’s daughter, Catherine Harris, ’15, in his obituary.
Mikhailov was intrigued. The idea gained traction, receiving U.S. government approval in 1993. Over the next 20 years, Neff shepherded the $17 billion deal. Some 500 metric tons of uranium—enough for 20,000 warheads—would be diluted into reactor fuel before transport; it provided 10 percent of electricity in the United States for two decades.
Thomas Neff, MS ’66, PhD ’73, a professor of physics at MIT and an expert in arms control, died on July 11 of a subdural hematoma. He was 80.
Neff grew up in Oregon and graduated from Lewis & Clark College, where his father was an assistant professor. He received a Danforth Fellowship to study physics at Stanford, where he found a mentor in the renowned particle physicist Wolfgang Panofsky, founding director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, a consultant on the Manhattan Project, and president of the American Physical Society. As Panofsky’s assistant at APS, Neff got his first taste of policy work and sat in on governmental meetings, sometimes alongside the U.S. president.
In 1977, Neff began his career at MIT, where he developed an expertise in uranium markets. With the Soviets’ nuclear stockpile a growing concern, he shared his idea with Frank von Hippel, a nuclear physicist and one of his former Stanford physics professors, who would be at the October 19 meeting.
“I didn’t know if this was going to fly or not, but we certainly needed ideas,” says von Hippel, who invited Neff to the meeting. “We didn’t have any of our own.”
The plan was scientifically simple, logistically brilliant, and completely counterintuitive, according to Stanford professor Giorgio Gratta, chair of Stanford’s physics department. “It takes a real scientist to produce it,” he says. “You need to be daring.”
Neff was predeceased by his son Marc. In addition to his daughter, his survivors include his wife, Beth Harris; son Chris; two grandchildren; and a brother.
Kali Shiloh is a staff writer at Stanford. Email her at kshiloh@stanford.edu.
