This article examines a set of public controversies surrounding the role of nuclear power and the threat of radioactive contamination in a post-Fukushima Japan. The empirical case study focuses on the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan most influential ministry and, more importantly, the former regulator of nuclear energy before the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Through participant observation of METI’s public conferences, as well as interviews with state and non-state actors, I examine how particular visions of nuclear power continue to affect the basis of expert authority through which state actors handle post-Fukushima controversies and their subsequent uncertainties. In its post-Fukushima representations, METI frames nuclear power as an apolitical necessity for the well-being of the Japanese nation-state and the common humanity. It does so by mobilizing categories of uncertainty around specific political scenes, such as global warming. For METI, the potential uncertainties linked with the abandonment of nuclear power have the power to trigger political turmoil of a higher scale than those linked with Fukushima’s radioactive contamination. A form of double depoliticization takes place, in which the issue of Fukushima’s radioactive contamination gets depoliticized through perceived priorities that are paradoxically depicted as ‘post-political’ – that is, in an urgent need for immediate action and not open to in-depth deliberation. I refer to this process as establishing ‘post-political uncertainties’. This kind of depoliticization raises ethical questions surrounding meaningful public participation in decisions that happen at the intersection of politics and science and technology study.

Read the rest at Social Studies of Science

Authorities don’t seem to understand the real threat from cyber-operations.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) has now confirmed that there was a cyberattack on the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) in Tamil Nadu, India, in September. The nuclear power plant’s administrative network was breached in the attack, but did not cause any critical damage. KKNPP plant officials had initially denied suffering an attack and officially stated that KKNPP “and other Indian nuclear power plants are stand alone and not connected to outside cyber network and Internet. Any cyberattack on the Nuclear Power Plant Control System is not possible.”

So what really happened at Kudankulam? Here’s what you need to know.

1. The nuclear power plant and the cyberattack

The KKNPP is the biggest nuclear power plant in India, equipped with two Russian-designed and supplied VVER pressurized water reactors with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts each. Both reactor units feed India’s southern power grid. The plant is adding four more reactor units of the same capacity, making the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant one of the largest collaborations between India and Russia.

Read the Rest at The Washington Post

U.S.-Turkish relations have plunged to a new nadir. In the past month, a senior Republican senator has suggested suspending Turkey’s membership in the NATO alliance, while the secretary of state implied a readiness to use military force against America’s wayward ally.

In these circumstances, U.S. nuclear weapons have no business in Turkey. It is time to bring them home.

The signs of a strained and deteriorating relationship are hard to miss. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s increasingly autocratic leader, has turned away from both Europe and the United States. He instead is actively cultivating a close relationship with fellow authoritarian Vladimir Putin, as evidenced by their eight meetings just this year.

Erdogan rejected buying U.S. Patriot air defense missiles in favor of Russian S-400s—missiles that are incompatible with NATO’s integrated air defense system. As a result, the United States excluded Turkey from taking part in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, leaving the question of Turkey’s next-generation fighter literally up in the air.

Following President Donald Trump’s rash decision to withdraw the small U.S. military contingent from eastern Syria, Erdogan launched the Turkish army on a major offensive. In doing so, he showed no regard for the Kurdish forces that did so much in collaboration with the U.S. military to destroy ISIS at great cost—some ten thousand Kurdish fighters killed. At one point, Turkish artillery bracketed a position still occupied by U.S. troops. Trump has threatened various sanctions and repeatedly expressed his readiness to “devastate” the Turkish economy.

One other worrying matter. Erdogan says he wants nuclear weapons. In September, he told his political party: “Some countries have missiles with nuclear warheads. But the West insists ‘we can’t have them.’ This, I cannot accept.”

Turkey is not the place to host U.S. nuclear arms.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, the U.S. military maintains 150 B61 nuclear gravity bombs in Europe for use in conflict by the U.S. and certain allied air forces. Reportedly, fifty of those are located at an American facility at the Turkish airbase at Incirlik (bases in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy host the other one hundred). The 39th Weapons Systems Security Group, numbering about five hundred U.S. Air Force personnel, secures and maintains the bombs at Incirlik.

The United States has deployed nuclear weapons in Europe going back to the 1950s, though the number today is drastically lower than the peak of more than seven thousand in the 1970s. The long-stated purpose of these deployments has been to help deter an attack against NATO member states in Europe while reassuring European allies of America’s commitment to their defense.

Ten years ago, many in Europe questioned the need for such forward-basing of U.S. nuclear arms. That talk has become muted as Moscow adopted a belligerent attitude toward the West, and the Russian military seized Crimea and provoked an armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Washington and NATO still see a need for American nuclear bombs in Europe. While any use of a nuclear weapon would have a military effect, the Alliance has come to regard these bombs as having primarily a political purpose: deterrence and, should deterrence fail and a conflict break out, to signal (by their use) that matters are about to escalate to potentially horrific levels and thus bring the conflict to an end.

The one hundred B61 bombs deployed at bases in NATO countries other than Turkey can fulfill those requirements. There is no requirement to have U.S. nuclear weapons on the territory of five NATO members in order to deter attack and provide assurance to the twenty-seven European members of the Alliance; that can readily be done with B61 bombs based in four countries.

Moreover, while the U.S., German, Dutch, Belgian and Italian air forces each have dual-capable aircraft certified to carry nuclear weapons and crews trained in nuclear delivery, questions arose some time ago as to whether that is so with the Turkish Air Force. In that case, the most likely scenario in which a Turkish-based nuclear bomb would be used would envisage a U.S. fighter flying into Incirlik, loading a B61 bomb, and then taking off to fly to and strike its target. It would seem much simpler to launch a nuclear-armed U.S. F-16 from its base at Aviano, Italy.

The rationale for maintaining nuclear weapons at Incirlik becomes more dubious by the day. It is time for the U.S. Air Force to bring them home.

Steven Pifer is a William Perry research fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer.

Originally for The National Interest at  https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/its-time-get-us-nuk…

CISAC Co-Director Rodney Ewing was awarded the Distinguished Public Service Award from the Mineralogical Society of America (MSA), to honor his “important contributions to furthering the vitality of the geological sciences.”

“I don’t know anyone more deserving of this award than Rod,” wrote Kevin Crowley, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (retired), in the citation for the award. “Rod is first and foremost an extraordinarily creative and productive scientist, having authored or coauthored over 750 research publications and established fruitful research collaborations with scientists in several countries. He is also a founding editor of Elements Magazine, co-published by 18 national and international scientific organizations, which focuses on current themes in the mineralogical and geochemical sciences.”

“He has been a major force in the application of science and technology to national and international public policy making on nuclear waste management and disposal... and appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board,” Crowley continued.

Among Ewing’s honors, he also is the past recipient of the MSA’s Dana Medal and Roebling Medal, the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Lomonosov Gold Medal, and was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

North Korea currently has only one publicly known uranium mine—the Pyongsăn uranium mining and milling complex—that serves as a first step in the country’s pathway towards nuclear weapons.

Using a combination of multispectral imagery sourced from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite and a review of geological analyses dating back to 1955, a new study from Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in Jane’s Intelligence Review by geological sciences postdoctoral fellow Sulgiye Park (PhD ’17) and CISAC honors student Federico Derby (BS ’19) looks for evidence of uranium mining in North Korea, going beyond what is currently available in open sources in order to estimate the uranium resources and their locations in North Korea.

The peer-reviewed CISAC study has identified around 18 additional sites in North Korea where the hyperspectral signatures and geological profile combine to suggest the possibility of uranium mining. Nevertheless, CISAC and Jane’s stress that the presence of these ‘hotspots’ does not imply the presence of an active uranium mine or related facility, but rather a site that warrants further analysis.

In this Q&A with Katy Gabel Chui, researchers Sulgiye Park and Federico Derby discuss their work on the project:

How did you land on this project? What made you think to look for more mining sites?

Sulgiye Park (SP) and Federico Derby (FD): Very little is known about the front-end of North Korea’s nuclear fuel cycle, particularly when it comes to the mining and milling processes of uranium production pathway. To date, assessments of this portion of North Korea’s nuclear fuel cycle have been mostly conducted through traditional (electro-optical) satellite imagery observations---the type of imagery that you can access through Google Earth, for instance.

We wanted to get a more complete grasp of North Korea's uranium mining and processing capacity by conducting a multi-disciplinary approach that combines both the visible signatures from multi-spectral satellite imagery and a geological dataset that contains information such as mineralogy and geochemistry. The two individual methods come together at the end to provide information that encapsulates the potential regions likely to host uranium deposits and mines.

What is multispectral imaging? How would it ordinarily be used, and how did you use it for this project?

SP and FD: Traditional electro-optical satellite imagery exploits only three portions of the electromagnetic spectrum; namely, the blue, green and red bands. In general, when using the term “multispectral” within the satellite imagery community, we are usually referring to a satellite system that covers a few to tens of different bands in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Multispectral imagery is used in a wide variety of industries, to measure things like water turbidity, crop healthiness, vegetation quality, etc. For this project, we focused on using spectral fingerprints. Basically, every object – whether it be a mineral, a living thing, water, etc. – has a(n in theory unique) spectral fingerprint. Spectral fingerprints are measured as the intensity of the object’s reflectance of light at a specific wavelength. Varying across wavelengths – hence the importance of having a multispectral system that can give you access to different ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum – you ultimately get a spectral curve that is unique to the item you are studying.

The spectral fingerprints you collect on a specific image can be compared to previously collected fingerprints stored in what is usually termed a spectral library, for classification purposes. Basically, if my spectral curve of a given pixel (or set of pixels) looks super similar to that of gold (for which I obtained a reference spectral curve from a spectral library), then it is probably gold. Obviously, this matching is performed in a more rigorous manner, but you get the idea of how the process works.

In this project, we used the Pyongsan uranium mine in North Korea (arguably the only well-identified uranium mine in the country) as my reference spectral curve. Essentially, using various imaging techniques, we traversed North Korea looking for pixels whose spectral curves are similar to that of the Pyongsan uranium mine. Those are the ‘hotspots’ we identified.

What most surprised you in both your work and your findings?

SP and FD: The fascinating match between the 'hotspots' identified through satellite imagery analysis and the geologic information available in maps and reports. The majority of the 'hotspots' appeared adjacent to the limestone formation from the Ordovician period (circa 445-485 Ma) that are in contact with a specific sedimentary rocks of upper Proterozoic group. Part of the geologic characteristics of the 'hotspots' regions were similar to what had been observed in the Pyongsan (the most well-known) uranium mine of North Korea.

What was most surprising in the work itself? What was difficult in doing the work?

SP and FD: It was surprising to see how much we still don't know about North Korea despite the amount of effort that had been invested. There is no consensus reached regarding the location and the total number of uranium mines in North Korea.

One of the bigger difficulties we had was finding credible geological data and information.

What is the one thing you think someone should take away from your study?

SP and FD: That there are still many unknowns. While our study identified multiple regions with spectral signatures similar to the uranium tailing piles at Pyongsan, verification of uranium presence is still needed.

What are you working on next?

SP: I am still working on using a geologic approach to glean information on the uranium mines of North Korea. The further evaluation aims to identify a qualitative upper limit of uranium ore grade (quality) and quantity pertaining to all the suspected uranium mines in North Korea.

FD: I co-founded a startup focused on developing deep learning models for credit risk analytics (in Latin America). However, I will still keep in touch with my CISAC peers!

Formed in 1979, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) works to provide policymakers with the U.S. intelligence community’s best judgments on crucial international issues. As a locus for coordinated intelligence analysis, the NIC’s work reflects the coordinated judgments of multiple agencies and departments in the broader intelligence community. But while it may be less shrouded in secrecy than many other intelligence offices, in some respects it is less well known.

In Truth to Power, published by Oxford University Press, editors Robert Hitchings and Gregory Treverton shed light on this little-understood intelligence agency. The volume provides the first-ever history of the NIC as recounted through the reflections of its eight chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar, who chaired the NIC from 2005 to 2008, is one of the contributors to the book.

In his chapter “New Mission, New Challenges”, Fingar discusses some of the challenges during his service with the agency. In particular, he reflects on two specific obstacles he faced during his tenure: executing the intelligence reforms drafted in the wake of 9/11, and repairing damage done to the NIC’s credibility by the failures of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

During his tenure, Fingar wore not one but two hats; along with the NIC chairmanship, he concurrently served as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis (DDNI/A). He describes actions taken not only to restore confidence in the intelligence community, but also to effectively execute its expanded brief. For instance, having national intelligence officers take the DDNI’s seat at meetings afforded senior officials the opportunity to perceive their value and thereby rebuild confidence in the broader intelligence community.

The Council’s reforms would soon be put to the test by way of the production of an NIE on Iranian WMD. Fingar recognized that the estimate would be a strong indicator of whether the NIC had learned its lessons following the flawed 2002 Iraq WMD estimate, and that policymakers were certain to finely examine the end product for flaws (whether made unintentionally or with political purposes in mind). As such, Fingar needed to produce an NIE that was accurate, timely, and non-political, all while handling and incorporating newly received intelligence. Through the Iran NIE, Fingar found an opportunity to redress the often-fraught relationship between Congress and the intelligence community.

Fingar closes with a review of the NIC’s pathbreaking work in the area of climate change. At the behest of a U.S. senator, the NIC took on the task of producing an NIE on the strategic implications of climate change. The resulting study categorized countries according to both their vulnerabilities and ability to manage impacts, as well as the broader implications it had for U.S. national security over the next twenty years. And while policymakers ultimately did not use the report as Fingar had hoped, he takes justified comfort in pointing out how it laid the groundwork for additional reports that followed, such as the National Research Council’s 2013 report Climate Change and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis.

Read Fingar's Chapter

This piece originally appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

As we witness the increasingly detrimental effects of global climate change, the role that nuclear power could play globally to mitigate its effects continues to be debated. The series of articles featured in the Bulletin in December 2016 aired a broad spectrum of opinions, ranging in assessment of the role of nuclear power from insignificant to mandatory. In this series, we present the perspective of a new crop of nuclear professionals who collectively represent two of the world leaders in nuclear power—the United States and Russia.

These young professionals work together to exchange views and ideas as part of the U.S.-Russia Young Professionals Nuclear Forum that we created in May 2016 to encourage dialogue on critical nuclear issues of concern to both countries. As most official avenues of US-Russia cooperation on nuclear issues were being shut down in pace with the deteriorating political relations between Washington and Moscow, our objective was to turn to the younger generation, because those in it will have to live with the consequences of a world in which their countries no longer cooperate to mitigate global nuclear dangers.

In the United States, our efforts are organized within the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, although we reach out to universities and other organizations across the country. In Russia, we were fortunate to find the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI), Russia’s flagship research university in nuclear engineering, to be an enthusiastic partner. Its rector, Professor Mikhail Strikhanov, has an unwavering international outlook that stresses the need for cooperation, especially in higher education and research. The young professionals are students, postdoctoral fellows, and early career professionals.

Hecker has previously written in the Bulletin about the remarkable period of post-Cold War nuclear cooperation between Russian and American nuclear weapon scientists and how the termination of that cooperation by our governments threatens our collective security. We viewed engaging young professionals from the two countries as one of the few avenues of continued cooperation. It has the potential of being particularly effective because at the forum meetings, the young Russians and Americans interact in an educational and non-adversarial environment.

The first three forum meetings focused primarily on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and countering nuclear terrorism. They featured exercises in which the young professionals worked in small groups side by side to explore solutions to vexing nuclear problems. One was a simulation conducted at Stanford in May 2018 just a few weeks before the historic Trump-Kim Singapore Summit. The other was an exercise in Moscow in October 2018 to advise their governments on a hypothetical crisis related to the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

At the Moscow forum, we also asked the young professionals to explore what the two countries could do to promote the benefits of nuclear energy around the globe, while cooperating to mitigate the associated risks.

Preparation for the forum included online lectures by senior mentors as well as lectures and discussion sessions in Moscow by both Russian and American specialists. In the nuclear power exercise, we assigned eight key questions to 24 young professionals. We divided them into eight teams, each composed of Russian and American participants. The central question was whether or not an expansion of global nuclear power is necessary to help mitigate the danger of global climate change. Individual groups examined issues of supply and demand around the globe and some of the big challenges posed by an expansion of nuclear power—those of economics, safety and security, potential proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the disposition of nuclear waste.

The young professionals conducted research prior to the meeting, deliberated and debated within their teams during the meeting, and presented their findings to the larger group and the panel of senior mentors at the end of the exercise. During the past six months they have captured the essence of their findings in the eight articles featured in this special presentation in the Bulletin.

Their findings are generally pro-nuclear, which is not surprising considering that most of them have strong educational and research backgrounds in either nuclear technologies or nuclear security. But we found that their views were primarily driven by their serious concerns about the dangers of global climate change and the urgent need to confront these dangers.

Their articles are of interest not so much in that they break new ground in these areas, particularly since many other  established experts have tried to tackle these issues for decades. They are of interest because they represent the views of some of the younger generation of professionals working together across cultural and disciplinary divides. We were struck by the following comment in one of the papers  that reflects on the perceived urgency of the task at hand: “We are the first generation that is experiencing the dramatic effects of global climate change and likely the last that can do something about it to avoid catastrophic consequences for the Earth and its people.”

We also note that the articles uniformly reveal that the young professionals across the board firmly believe that the benefits and risks of expanding nuclear power globally must be pursued and tackled in a concerted effort of major nuclear powers (especially the United States and Russia), other developed nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and all stakeholders. These younger voices stated: “The most important shift necessary to facilitate [nuclear power] expansion is an increase in international cooperation and multilateralization in the form of, for example, international reactor supply contracts, multinational enrichment conglomerates, nondiscriminatory fuel banks, and international waste repositories.”

We believe the readers will find the sentiments and opinions of the young Russian and American professionals interesting and encouraging. We certainly have found them eager and able to work together effectively—a lesson that the more senior professionals and the governments need to relearn.

Editor’s note: The Young Professionals Nuclear Forum cooperation is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Read the articles here:

• Nuclear Power and Global Climate Change
• What Countries Will Be the Most Important in Leading a Significant Expansion of Global Nuclear Power—Both From the Perspective of the Supplier and the User?
• Should Nuclear Power Be Expanded Significantly Into Developing Countries?
• What Will Be Required for a Significant Expansion of Global Nuclear Energy?
• Resolving Safety and Security Concerns About Nuclear Power
• Why Nuclear Power Plants Cost so Much—and What Can Be Done About It
• Will Nuclear Waste Disposal Challenges Limit a Significant Expansion of Global Nuclear Power? Part 1
• Will Nuclear Waste Disposal Challenges Limit a Significant Expansion of Global Nuclear Power? Part 2