In this essay, Siegfried Hecker describes a 1992 visit to nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union.
Scholars at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies assess the strategic situation in East Asia to be unsettled, unstable, and drifting in ways unfavorable for American interests. These developments are worrisome to countries in the region, most of which want the United States to reduce uncertainty about American intentions by taking early and effective steps to clarify and solidify U.S. engagement. In the absence of such steps, they will seek to reduce uncertainty and protect their own interests in ways that reduce U.S. influence and ability to shape regional institutions. This 23-page report entitled “President Trump’s Asia Inbox” suggests specific steps to achieve American economic and security interests.
Abstract: Since their conception in the 1950s, thorium reactors have been promoted as a promising technology for nuclear energy generation, though they have not yet been successfully commercialized. Proponents of thorium reactors argue that they are safer, produce less waste, and are proliferation-resistant, compared with uranium-fueled light water reactors used around the world today. The central question guiding this research concerns the final claim. Is the thorium fuel cycle inherently more resistant to nuclear weapons proliferation than the traditional uranium fuel cycle?
Advocates argue that the thorium fuel cycle is less vulnerable to proliferation of nuclear weapons technology because little or no plutonium is produced. Additionally, fissile U-233 is claimed to be “self-protected” by U-232, which is produced with U-233 and decays through Tl-208, emitting highly energetic gamma radiation. But the amount of U-232 generated depends on reactor operation. Furthermore, the U-232 content can be further decreased by conducting chemical separations at the back-end of the fuel cycle.
This presentation will discuss the proliferation risks of the thorium fuel cycle. The potential for generating large stockpiles of isotopically pure U-233 by conducting protactinium separations at the back end of the fuel cycle is examined as a new proliferation pathway that current IAEA safeguards may not be prepared to address.
About the Speaker: Eva C. Uribe is a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC for the 2016-2017 academic year. Her research involves identifying proliferation pathways in the thorium fuel cycle and assessing the potential impact and implications of U-233 stockpile generation on the international nonproliferation regime. Eva received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2016. Her dissertation research focused on structural analysis of organically-modified porous silica surfaces for the extraction of uranium from aqueous solutions using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In 2011 Eva received a B.S. from Yale University with a double major in Chemistry and Political Science. She served as a Next Generation Safeguards Initiative intern with the Nonproliferation Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2008 and 2009.
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Abstract: While impressive strides have been made in detecting physical evidence of nuclear weapons production, there is no consensus on how international relationships combine to motivate or deter policymakers from seeking nuclear weapons. Rather than address a single variable, this study investigates how networks of interstate conflict, alliances, trade, and nuclear cooperation merge to increase or decrease the proliferation likelihood of individual states. Using multiplex networks to study the structure of international relations factors theorized to deter or incentivize nuclear proliferation and open-source data on military alliances, macroeconomic ties, armed conflicts, and nuclear cooperation agreements, we construct a multilayer network model in which states are nodes linked by proliferation-relevant variables. This work shows the first quantitative heterogenous analysis of external proliferation determinants using a network science formalism and opens a new avenue of study of the external proliferation motivators for each state within an international network. Preliminary findings suggest that specific external relations—particularly the existence of armed conflict and the signing of Nuclear Cooperation Agreements—largely explain the decision of states to proliferate or not.
About the Speaker: Bethany L. Goldblum is a member of the research faculty in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the Scientific Director of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, a multi-institution initiative established by DOE’s NNSA to support the nation’s nonproliferation mission through cutting-edge research in nuclear security science in collaboration with the national laboratories. Goldblum founded and directs the Nuclear Policy Working Group, an interdisciplinary team of undergraduate and graduate students focused on developing policy solutions to strengthen global nuclear security. She has been involved with the Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Boot Camp nearly since its inception, and acted as director of the program since 2013. Goldblum received a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007.
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The Summary and Briefings from the Stanford-China Workshop on Reducing Risks of Nuclear Terrorism is the result of a collaborative project engaging researchers from the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and several Chinese nuclear organizations focused on the response to nuclear terrorism threats. A goal of the research was to identify prospective joint research initiatives that might reduce the global and regional dangers of such threats. Initiatives were identified in three technical areas: interdiction of smuggled nuclear and radiological materials; nuclear forensics; and countermeasures to radiological (“dirty bomb”) threats. Application of the methodologies of systems and risk analysis to the framing and initial assessment of these areas was emphasized in the project. The workshop summarized in the report brought together the analysis work from this project and related efforts by both Chinese and U.S. analysts.
Siegfried Hecker describes Russia's systematic termination of nuclear cooperation with the United States and the harmful consequences that this could have for both countries.
Abstract: This talk examines ideologies of knowledge and expertise in the global governance of nuclear technology through an ethnographic study of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Department of Safeguards. It considers how changes in the way that the IAEA carries out international nuclear safeguards have become the subject of increasing controversy in the last 15 years. This controversy provides fertile ground for understanding the role of knowledge and the functioning of bureaucracy in international governance. I will show that the critiques addressed against the new safeguards system reveal not only political alignments and struggles for power, but also uncover global and regional assumptions about how a technical bureaucracy is supposed to produce knowledge. In closing, I will propose how nuclear safeguards might be adapted to a changing security environment without threatening the IAEA's expert authority or politically discriminating against states.
About the Speaker: Anna M. Weichselbraun is a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago in August 2016. Anna's dissertation, based on 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork and multi-archival research, investigates how nuclear safeguards inspectors, bureaucrats, and diplomats at the IAEA negotiate the international and institutional boundaries of politics and technology in their working lives. She asks how organizational products such as bureaucratic procedures, technical inspection reports, policy papers, and official diplomatic statements contribute to the logical ordering of technocratic expertise within the IAEA. She is especially interested in how individuals at international organizations communicate across different epistemic paradigms, and how particular types of knowledge become recognized as authoritative and legitimate. In addition to revising her dissertation into a book manuscript, she is also conducting preliminary research on networks of nonproliferation experts and their spheres of influence.
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Anna Weichselbraun is a former Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow (2016-2018). She is a research and teaching postdoc at the Department of European Ethnology at the University of Vienna. Her research examines the governance of technologies as well as technologies of governance.
In her book The Nuclear Order of Things: Making Safeguards Technical at the IAEA, Anna provides an intimate view of the practices and activities of nuclear safeguards inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and connects these quotidian practices to the geopolitics of nuclear governance.
Her current project explores problems of Anthropocene governance, that is, the social mechanisms and technological infrastructures by which humans attempt to mitigate the uncertainty emanating from each other and their environments. In 2022-23 she is a USC-Berggruen fellow looking at how experiments in blockchain-based organizational forms can inform new visions of global governance.
Abstract: In international politics, the division between allies and adversaries appears quite clear. For example, it is conventional wisdom that North Korea is China’s ally and South Korea is the United States’ ally. In proliferation literature, the main catalyst for nuclear proliferation is threats from adversaries, while an ally’s nuclear umbrella mitigates the threat and willingness to proliferate. However, in reality the division between a credible ally and threatening foe is less clear-cut. Contrary to conventional wisdom, security threats alone do not trigger the decision of an ally to develop its indigenous nuclear weapons program. In other words, security could be a necessary condition for wanting the nuclear bomb, but it is not a sufficient condition for starting an indigenous program. Rather, the sense of abandonment or clashes of national interests between two friendly states triggers a state to pursue an indigenous weapons program. Using newly available declassified documents to conduct process tracing, and comparing the decision-making in the cases of China and South Korea, I show that Chinese and South Korean nuclear weapons programs were triggered not by their foes, the U.S and North Korea, respectively, but by their friends, the Soviet Union and the U.S.
About the Speaker: Jooeun Kim is a MacArthur Nuclear Security Predoctoral fellow at CISAC for 2016-17. She is completing her PhD in international relations at Georgetown University’s Department of Government. She studies credibility, alliance management, and nuclear proliferation within military alliances.
Her dissertation examines the credibility of a patron ally as the source of a protégé ally’s nuclear decisions, through analyzing allies’ behaviors during international crises.
She completed an MA in Government at Georgetown University, an MA in International Affairs at George Washington University, and a BA in Political Science at Waseda University, Japan. She speaks Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
Outside of her dissertation writing, she is a certified yoga instructor and enjoys sculling on the Potomac River.
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The U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, in collaboration with the Japan Center for International Exchange, has published a report highlighting the findings from its Inaugural U.S.-Japan Security Workshop, a Track 1.5 dialogue in Tokyo that convened government and military officials from the United States and Japan, as well as scholars and regional experts, in May 2016.
The report, titled “Japan’s Evolving Defense Policy and U.S.-Japan Security Cooperation: Expectations versus Reality,” examines recent changes in Japan’s defense policy and the implications of these revisions on the U.S.-Japan alliance and regional security.
Sections of the report include:
Rising tensions in Asia underscore a need for expanded security cooperation. The report is offered as a tool to American and Japanese policy researchers and practitioners who seek to study and address the evolving security environment and what the future holds for the alliance.
The report may viewed by clicking here.
