Abstract: The purpose and force of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty hinges on a legal distinction between "nuclear weapons states" and "non-nuclear weapons states." But rather than being a self-evident distinction based entirely on material differences, the distinction is constructed and negotiated—not just by the conventionally powerful but by disempowered states. This article argues that the NPT is a discursive resource for states that the treaty does not legitimate. The NPT’s power comes from the legal categories it institutionalizes and perpetuates. In order to understand the origins and effects of dividing the terrain of nuclear politics into nuclear and non-nuclear states, I analyze the meeting documents of the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC) which negotiated the treaty from 1962-1969. I find that the “non-nuclear” states used the designation as an identity that set them apart from nuclear states. Using these categories like identities is not without political consequence—for example, India’s unique diplomatic approach toward the NPT shapes both the discourses it advances and policies it pursues.  In contrast to existing approaches that examine the distinction primarily through material terms, this article turns to state practice to reveal how being nuclear or non-nuclear is used as a legitimating tool in nuclear politics. The article also shows that, while most approaches to international law presume that the law either constrains state power or has no effect on it, the case of the nuclear/non-nuclear distinction illustrates that international law does matter, but perhaps not in the way assumed by IR realists or institutionalists.

Speaker Bio: Sidra Hamidi is a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. She completed her PhD in Political Science from Northwestern University in 2018. Her research explores the role of identity and discourse in contemporary and historical nuclear politics. Specifically, she studies the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear states in technical, legal, and normative contexts. She locates the politics of this distinction in the diplomatic practices of Israel, India, and Iran. She completed her MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago. Her commentary has appeared in The Washington Post, Duck of Minerva, and E-IR. She is also interested in international relations theory and political science conceptualization and methodology.

Abstract: Is India considering developing nuclear counterforce options against Pakistan? This paper traces the capabilities and procedures India has been quietly developing over the past decade, as well as identifying increasing discussion of using its nuclear forces for potential counterforce targeting against Pakistani strategic systems. It outlines the incentives India may have to pursue these options, and assesses their prospects for successfully achieving damage limitation. It also outlines the significant downsides to pursuing such a strategy. It concludes that, at the very least, South Asia is potentially entering a new, dangerous phase with these evolving nuclear dynamics.

Speaker Bio: Vipin Narang is an Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT and a member of MIT’s Security Studies Program. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Government, Harvard University in May 2010, where he was awarded the Edward M. Chase Prize for the best dissertation in international relations. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in chemical engineering with distinction from Stanford University and an M. Phil with Distinction in international relations from Balliol College, Oxford University, where he studied on a Marshall Scholarship. He has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, a predoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and a Stanton junior faculty fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.  

The film screening of Atomic Homefront will be followed by a discussion with Human Rights Watch’s Marcos Orellana, Prof. Rod Ewing, and Lauren Davis (Director, Energy Program, 11th Hour Project). The conversation will be moderated by Michael Kieschnick (President, Green Advocacy Project). Atomic Homefront is a documentary about one community’s fight for environmental justice. 

Directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rebecca Cammisa (Which Way Home, Sister Helen), Atomic Homefront is a documentary about one community’s activism and the need for government accountability in the wake of decades of radioactive waste contamination in the northern suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri.

Abstract: The Berkeley Applied Nuclear Physics Program leads developments of new concepts and technologies to address challenges in fundamental physics, medicine, nuclear security, and safety. Recent progress in radiation detection and imaging combined with advances in computer vision and data processing enable unprecedented capabilities in the detection, mapping, and visualization of radiological and nuclear materials in complex environments. We have developed a new concept called 3-D Scene Data Fusion, which fuses contextual and radiation data to produce 3-D maps of radioactive sources in real-time. We have deployed this capability in unmanned and manned configurations in different locations including evacuated communities and at the Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture. While these technologies are necessary to better respond to accidents now and in the future, we need to ensure that the data provided can be understood by all stakeholders, including communities exposed to the risk of detrimental effects. We have established the Berkeley Institute for Resilient Communities to address this need by combining research, education, and communities in an international, multi-disciplinary, and multi-cultural context. Important components of these activities are the Radwatch and DoseNet programs which provide the basis for our communications. As an example, DoseNet aims at establishing a sustainable multi-sensor high-school network enabling students across the world to learn important concepts in science and engineering and what is normal in our world.

Speaker bio: Dr. Kai Vetter is Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and Faculty Senior Scientist and Head of the Applied Nuclear Physics program at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His main research interests are in the development and demonstration of new concepts and technologies in radiation detection to address some of the outstanding challenges in fundamental sciences, nuclear security, and health.

Prof. Vetter is director of Institute for Resilient Communities that was established in 2015 to address the need to better integrate advancements in sciences and technologies with communities through education and outreach locally and globally. He initiated and still leads the Berkeley Radwatch and DoseNet activities with the goal to engage high and middle schools in performing environmental measurements employing fundamental science and engineering concepts and to expand across regions, nations, and cultures.

He has authored and co-authored about 200 publications in peer-reviewed journals and is fellow of the American Physical Society. He received Presidential Citations from the American Nuclear Society twice, for his engagement in Fukushima through measurements and enhancing community resilience.

Abstract: Founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists who “could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists aimed to chronicle the dawn of the nuclear age through the words of the men and women who built the atomic bomb. In 1947, Bulletin supporters—including a veritable Who’s Who of nuclear physics, from Einstein and Fermi to Szilard and Oppenheimer—expanded their four-page newsletter into a magazine that featured a minimalist clock, ticking toward the midnight of nuclear Armageddon, on its cover. More than 70 years later, the now-famous Doomsday Clock is set each January to reflect the world’s security situation. That event is now covered by thousands of media outlets around the world, and today’s Bulletin is hardly your grandfather’s niche magazine. It has become a global multimedia platform that deals with a host of manmade threats to civilization—from nuclear weapons to climate change and on to a host of emerging technologies—and reaches a worldwide digital audience of millions each year.     

Speaker bio: John Mecklin is the editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Miller-McCune (since renamed Pacific Standard), an award-winning national magazine that focuses on research-based solutions to major policy problems, and the top editor of High Country News, a nationally acclaimed magazine that reports on the politics, environment, and culture of the American West. Writers working at his direction have won many major journalism prizes, including the George Polk Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors certificate, and the Sidney Hillman Award for social justice journalism. Beyond his columns for the magazines he has edited, Mecklin’s writing has been published by Foreign Policy, The Columbia Journalism Review, and the Reuters international news service, among other media outlets. Before his magazine work, Mecklin was an investigative newspaper reporter and covered the Persian Gulf War from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He holds a master in public administration degree from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Precourt Institute for Energy and will take place in the Engineering Quad (see address above) from 4:30 - 5:20 PM

Abstract: The U.S. nuclear waste management program is stymied on multiple fronts – from the disposal of the high-level and transuranic wastes of defense programs, to the spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants, and even, the disposition of fissile material from dismantled nuclear weapons. In 2002, Congress approved President George W. Bush’s decision that the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada be selected as the nation’s repository for high-activity radioactive wastes. In 2008, the Department of Energy submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct that facility. Two years later, the administration concluded that developing a repository at Yucca Mountain was “unworkable.” Today a stalemate prevails between those who continue to maintain that the Yucca Mountain project is “unworkable“ and those who believe that the choice of the site is the “law.“

Against this background, the Precourt Institute for Energy and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies sponsored a series of five meetings to identify the critical issues that must be addressed in ordert to move the U.S. program forward. The issues identified, which will be discussed in the presentation, include:

• New nuclear waste management organization
• Consent-based sitting process
• Integration of the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle
• Revision of regulations and a new approach to the assessment of safety
• Analysis of the risk of a status quo approach for the United States

Speaker bio: Rod Ewing is the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. Rod has written extensively on issues related to nuclear waste and is a co-editor of Radioactive Waste Forms for the Future (1988) and Uncertainty Underground – Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste (2006).  He received the Lomonosov Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2006 for his work on issues of the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is a Principal Editor for Nano LIFE, an interdisciplinary journal focused on collaboration between physical and medical scientists and is a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In 2012, he was appointed by President Obama to chair the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which provides scientific and technical reviews of the U.S. Department of the Energy’s programs for the management and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. He stepped down in 2017.