David Bondurant of Vertical Memory

Project Sapphire - The Untold Store

Preventing Brain Drain & Securing Nuclear Materials

David Bondurant, Life Senior Member

60 Minutes Recently Told the story of Project Sapphire, a covert mission in 1994 to transport 600 Kg of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) from Kazakhstan to prevent nuclear proliferation to countries such as Iran and North Korea following the end of the Soviet Union.  This effort was part an even bigger effort to prevent brain drain of key scientists and secure nuclear materials in the newly independent states from terrorism.  I will describe a visit to Russia in 1990 which led to the Global Initiative for Proliferation Protection (GIPP) and a program called the US Industry Coalition (USIC) which put weapons scientists in Russia and the Newly Independent States of the Soviet Union to work on peaceful programs and secured nuclear materials.  This on-going effort by the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) to secure HEU continues today at the center of the current Middle East conflict.

Biography:

 David Bondurant  is a IEEE Life Senior Member who has been involved with the computer and semiconductor industry for 55-years.  He was a computer architect at Control Data, Sperry-Univac, and Honeywell.  He was involved with the government-sponsored advanced semiconductor program called VHSIC (Very High Speed Integrated Circuits) at Univac & Honeywell where he developed microprocessor and ASIC semiconductor products in bipolar CML, CMOS, and radiation hard CMOS.  He was involved with emerging non-volatile RAM marketing at industry leading companies, Ramtron (FRAM), Enhanced Memory Systems (EDRAM, ESDRAM, ESRAM), Simtek (non-volatile SRAM), and Freescale Semiconductor/Everspin Technologies (MRAM).