In 1946, the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics—a nuclear weapons design facility that would become known in the West under the acronym VNIIEF—was built.

The main access is by train, which, after a security stop and inspection, is allowed into the town to disembark passengers.

Foreigners who visit on business must surrender their passports, phones, and cameras to security while they are in the facility, though some documentary filmmakers have shot footage inside the town walls.

Scientists from LANL and VNIIEF have cooperated on various arms control and nuclear safeguards programs, under which the Los Alamos scientists learned, to their amusement, that their Russian colleagues paid homage to their American rivals by irreverently calling their own laboratory "Los Arzamas.

"[12] Boris Yeltsin changed the town's name back to Sarov at the request of the residents in August 1995.

On June 17, 1997, a Russian Federal Nuclear Center senior researcher Alexandr Zakharov received a fatal dose of 4850 rem in a criticality accident.

[13][14] Today the Russian federal nuclear center is responsible for important decisions concerning the development, production, storage, and utilization of nuclear weapons; the recycling of radioactive and other materials; and research in fundamental and applied physics.

International foundations have helped to fund some research scientists in Sarov following the downsizing and transitions after the Soviet era.

[18] Later on August 12, 2019, the bodies of the Rosatom workers, who were involved in the development and testing of the 9M730 Burevestnik (Petrel) also known as by the NATO reporting name SSC-X-9 Skyfall, were buried in Sarov's main cemetery.