CISAC's Tom Isaacs participated in a discussion on nuclear energy in America for the World Affairs Council Northern California.
Event Description:
The 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 set in motion one of the largest nuclear disasters in almost three decades. It also renewed the debate over the future of nuclear energy in the US and abroad. With 104 nuclear power plants across the country, generating about 20 percent of America's energy, there is no doubt that we are currently dependent on nuclear energy, yet the debate over this highly contentious technology is far from resolved. The three panelists will discuss what this disaster means for the future of US energy. How will the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant shape future energy policies and public opinion, and are there existing renewable technologies capable of fulfilling the world’s energy needs? Will nuclear energy be the fuel of the 21st century, or a relic of the past?
Listen to the talk by clicking the link below.
Tom is Co-Principal Investigator for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Developing Spent Fuel Strategies (DSFS) project coordinating international cooperation on issues at the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle with emphasis on spent fuel management and disposal in Pacific Rim countries. Participants include senior nuclear officials from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Canada, and the United States.
Tom advises national nuclear waste programs on facility siting, communications, stakeholder engagement, and public trust and confidence. He has worked with the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) for 15 years.
Tom was recently named as the Chair of the recently formed Experts Team to support Southern California Edison at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
Previously Tom was a Consulting Professor at CISAC, lead advisor to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, Member of the National Academy of Sciences Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, Director of Planning at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and long time senior executive at the Department of Energy where he led the siting of Yucca Mountain as the nation’s candidate site for a geologic repository.
He has degrees in Engineering, Applied Physics, and Chemical Engineering from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Congratulations to the 10 members of the Class of 2011 CISAC Honors Program in International Security Studies. The students were honored at a June 10 ceremony for their successful participation in the interdisciplinary program and for their contributions to the field of international security research.
The Stanford seniors join 114 others who have graduated from the program since its inception in 2000. This year's program was co-directed by Coit D. Blacker and Martha Crenshaw, with assistance from teaching assistant Michael Sulmeyer.
In alphabetical order, the students, their majors, and their thesis titles are:
Devin Banerjee
Management Science and Engineering
India's Red Stain: Explaining the Indian Government's Ineffective Response to the Maoist-Naxalite Insurgency Since 1967.
Peter Davis
International Relations
The Non-Aligned Movement: A Struggle for Global Relevance
Biology
The Demise and Rise of Governance in Health Systems: A Path Forward
RJ Halperin
Political Science
The U.S. and the Origins of the Pakistani Nuclear Weapons Program: National Interests, Proliferation Pessimism, and Executive-Legislative Politics
Akhil Iyer
International Relations, Minor in Arabic
The Establishment of the U.S. Africa Command: Form, Function, and the Process of Agency Formation
Astasia Myers
Political Science and International Relations, Minor in Economics
IAEA Enforcement of Nuclear Nonproliferation Violators: Are Some Animals More Equal than Others?
Jimmy Ruck
History
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? Evolving Civil Military-Relations in China
Engineering Physics and International Relations
Sunny Side Up: Characterizing the U.S. Military's Approach to Solar Energy Policy
* Recipient of the William J. Perry Award
Jaclyn Tandler
International Relations
Let Them Eat Yellow Cake: Understanding the History of France's Sensitive Nuclear Export Policy
*Recipient of the Firestone Medal
Shine Zaw-Aung
International Relations, Minor in Energy Engineering
The Third Horseman: On Famines and Governments
“Anticipating the future is difficult in any situation, but assessing the prospects for nuclear power in the next fifty years presents especially complex challenges," write Katherine D. Marvel and Michael M. May in a new paper published by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
"The public perception of nuclear power has changed and continues to change. Once viewed as a miracle of modern technology, nuclear power came to be perceived by many as a potential catastrophe; now it is viewed as a potential, albeit potentially still dangerous, source of green power. Conventional wisdom in the 1960s held that nuclear power could dominate the electricity sectors of developed countries, while less than twenty years later, many predicted the complete demise of the U.S. nuclear industry following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Yet neither attitude fully forecast the situation today: a nuclear industry that is not dominant, but is far from dead. Indeed, the history of long-range planning for nuclear power serves as a caution for anyone wishing to make predictions about the state of the industry over the next half-century.
Nonetheless, it is critical to assess its role in the future energy mix: decisions taken now will impact the energy sector for many years. This assessment requires both a review of past planning strategies and a new approach that considers alternate scenarios hat may differ radically from business as usual. While a number of studies have explored the future of nuclear power under various circumstances, the purpose of this paper is to consider gamechanging events for nuclear energy.”
(Russian/Ukraine/USA, 2006; dir. Thomas Johnson; 93 min.)
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm (*NEW TIME*)
Cubberly Auditorium
Free and open to the public
On April 26, 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian city of Pripyat exploded and began spewing radioactive smoke and gas. More than 40,000 residents in the immediate area were exposed to fallout a hundred times greater than that from the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Based on top-secret government documents that came to light only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1999, The Battle of Chernobyl reveals a systematic cover-up of the true scope of the disaster, including the possibility of a secondary explosion of the still-smoldering magma, whose radioactive clouds would have rendered Europe uninhabitable.
Co-sponsored by the School of Education, Crothers Global Citizenship, Stanford Continuing Studies, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the Stanford Film Society
For more information, visit the CREEES Event Website.
Cubberley Auditorium
