CISAC will be canceling all public events and seminars until at least April 5th due to the ongoing developments associated with COVID-19.

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Abstract: Since the opening of their first facilities, French nuclear companies chose to entrust some (or all, since the 1980s) of their maintenance procedures –the work presenting the greatest work-related hazards –to subcontractors. Starting to the 1970's, a controversy arose about working conditions and the using of employees of subcontracting companies for the operations that were most exposed to radioactive hazards. While subcontracting became endemic to the nuclear industry in France and around the world, there are still few social science studies based on direct research with nuclear maintenance employees, and fewer still addressing workplace health issues.This intervention will describe the processes of problematization of labour and recourse to subcontractors in nuclear industry. It will help understanding why the issue in occupational health do not gain more social visibility. Historical ethnography is the chosen approach. It combines observations, interviews and work in the archives.

Speaker's Biography: Marie Ghis Malfilatre has been a postdoctoral fellow at INSERM, in Paris since January 2019. She is also lecturer in sociology at Sciences Po Grenoble. Defendedat the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, her thesis focuseson labor, health, and precarity in the French nuclear industry. Itoffersan interdisciplinary examination of occupational health controversies among both salariedand subcontracted workers at two of France’s principalnuclear facilities: the fuel reprocessing plant at La Hague, and the pressurizedwater reactors at Chinon. Hercurrent researchaims at understanding the interactions between law, medical expertise,and political power when it comes to recognizing radiation-induced occupational diseases. It unveilsdynamics amongknowledge, recognition,and ignorance of occupational health issues, and shows how the nuclear industry exemplifieslogics and issues at stake in many other professional domains.

Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

Abstract: State nuclear enterprises are shrouded in secrecy. This fact alone makes nuclear security scholarship difficult. Yet recent scholarship has begun to explain variation in the secrecy of international politics. This panel will investigate the strategic uses of  secrecy and deniability both within and between states in the nuclear domain. We will discuss the role of secrecy in coercive bargaining, the relationship between secrecy, deniability, and dual-use technologies, and assess their value and limitations in matters of nuclear security. Pauly will present ongoing research into the constructive opacity of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Das will present evidence on the role of secrecy and deniability in the sales of nuclear delivery systems that undercut the nonproliferation regime. And Borja will present work on how uncertainty in cyberspace affects the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Speakers' Biography: 

Lauren Borja is a Stanton Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC, where her research will focus on the cyber insider threat to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. She is broadly interested in the effect of new technology on nuclear security issues, leveraging her technical skills as a scientist to inform and contribute to the issues in nuclear policy. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where she constructed an ultrafast laser apparatus for studying fundamental interactions inside semiconductor materials with unprecedented resolution. Lauren completed her Ph.D. in December 2016 and is currently a Simons Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia, where she studies nuclear disarmament and risk. She has authored articles on the Nuclear Ban Treaty, nuclear false alarms, and cybersecurity risks in the nuclear arsenal that have appeared in the Vancouver Sun, American Physical Society’s Physics and Society newsletter, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Debak Das is a MacArthur Nuclear Security Pre-doctoral Fellow at CISAC. He is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Department of Government, Cornell University. His doctoral dissertation examines how regional powers build their nuclear force structures. This research is based on extensive fieldwork in India, the United Kingdom, and France. Debak is also interested in historical archives, public opinion and foreign policy, and South Asian politics. His research has been supported by the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, the Wilson Center, Cornell University’s Graduate School, the Cornell Institute for European Studies, and the Chateaubriand Fellowship in Humanities and Social Sciences. Debak received his M.Phil in Diplomacy and Disarmament, and his M.A. in Politics and International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He also holds a B.A. (Honors) in History from Presidency College, Kolkata. Debak has formerly held research positions at Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies and the Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation, New Delhi. His prior work includes organizing extensive Track II Dialogues between India and Pakistan specifically on nuclear and other related security issues. 

Reid Pauly is a Stanton Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. His scholarship focuses on coercion and nuclear weapons proliferation, especially the causes of credible coercive assurance—why and how targets of coercion believe that they will not be punished after they comply with demands. His broader research interests include wargaming and crisis simulations, nuclear strategy, and tacit cooperation between adversaries. Reid is a PhD candidate in Political Science at MIT and a member of the Security Studies Program. He was also a predoctoral fellow at the International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Prior to graduate school, Reid was a research assistant at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and earned a B.A. in History and Government from Cornell University.

This event is co-sponsored by the Program in History and Philosophy of Science; Program in Science, Technology, and Society; and Stanford Center for Law and History.

Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded

Abstract: How have national practices of nuclear security produced local conditions of insecurity? After World War II, the United States’ nuclear testing program transformed the Marshall Islands into an experimental site for testing both new weapons and forms of territorial governance. During the same period, the Hunters Point Shipyard in southeast San Francisco became the launching point and return site for ships, scientists, and military personnel circulating between the mainland and the Pacific tests. These activities not only incorporated the Marshall Islands and Hunters Point into networks of militarization and scientific knowledge production, but also resulted in widespread radiological contamination. Professors Mary Mitchell and Helen Kang will discuss the entangled legal, environmental, and social legacies of radiological contamination at these two sites, shedding light on the consequential damages of the Cold War and ongoing efforts to demand accountability from the United States government.

Helen Kang Biography: Helen H. Kang is Professor of Law at Golden Gate University School of Law and Director of the school’s Environmental Law and Justice Clinic, which has received recognition for its work from the American Bar Association and the Clinical Legal Education Association, among others. She has devoted most of her legal career to environmental protection, first as Trial Attorney with the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. Since joining the clinic in 2000, she and her students have successfully represented community and environmental groups, prevailing against agencies such as U.S. EPA and large sources of pollution, including power plants. The clinic’s work has contributed to developments in environmental law, reducing pollution in communities most affected by pollution in California and beyond, and improving public participation and regulatory accountability. Helen’s achievements include successfully arguing in the California Supreme Court to defend the California Environmental Quality Act from federal preemption and compelling California, after decades of abdication, to meaningfully regulate agricultural pollution. She graduated from Berkeley Law, University of California at Berkeley, and Yale University.

Mary Mitchell Biography: Mary X. Mitchell is an Assistant Professor of History at Purdue University where she works on issues at the intersection of environmental inequality and law. During the spring of 2020, Mitchell will be a faculty fellow at Princeton University's Shelby Cullom Davis Center. She earned her PhD in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and was an Atkinson Fellow in Sustainability at Cornell University from 2016-2018. Previously, she practiced law in Pennsylvania and served as a law clerk to Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/8JDHuY0HMCM

Abstract: The motivation to develop nuclear energy waned in the latter part of the twentieth century. Technologies such as very-high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and fast-neutron liquid-metal reactors had been pursued for the purpose of recycling used nuclear fuel from water-cooled reactors, or for the purpose of supplying high-temperature process heat to the chemical industry or for hydrogen production. While both worthwhile causes, one could argue that the important missing element of all of these advanced nuclear reactor technologies was a business case: how were nuclear power plants to be profitable? With the more widely recognized need for decarbonizing energy production, the new driver for developing nuclear energy became cost. Can nuclear power be economically competitive with natural gas and coal, in order to provide an economic driver for the displacement of fossil fuel? This became the new motivation for nuclear energy development in the twenty-first century, and over the last decade the unthinkable happened: a growing and striving ecosystem of nuclear energy start-up companies. Many of these start-up companies pursue the development of liquid-fuel molten salt reactors, fueled by thorium or uranium fuel. Other start-up companies develop solid-fuel reactors cooled by salt, or even fusion reactors cooled by salt. The common feature of nuclear reactors that utilize molten salt is the operation at high-temperature and atmospheric pressure. The high temperature leads to doubled power efficiencies, compared to conventional water-cooled reactors. The atmospheric pressure leads to a safety case that is arguably easier to demonstrate, and hence that would enable a faster commercialization time.  On the other hand, there remain many technical risks and time-line uncertainties for the development of salt nuclear technologies. There remain also questions of policy, licensing, and compatibility with local industry and local culture, necessary elements for the global development of such nuclear reactors. This talk will explore some of the challenges faced by the global deployment of molten-salt and salt-cooled reactors, and some of the challenges faced by nuclear start-up companies in order to change the innovation cycle for nuclear energy technology from thirty years to a much shorter time frame.

Speaker's Biography:

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Abstract: In 2013, the Obama Administration’s “Nuclear Employment Strategy” guidance announced that all war plans and operations would be “consistent with the fundamental principles of the Law of Armed Conflict” (LOAC). The Trump Administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review repeated this commitment. The literature on nuclear strategy and deterrence in political science however, has either ignored these legal requirements or misunderstood them. The legal literature on nuclear weapons, however, has largely ignored the technical revolution regarding improved accuracy and lower-yield nuclear weapons and the different strategic contexts in which the U.S. might contemplate nuclear use. This paper analyzes how proper application of the Law of Armed Conflict should constrain U.S. nuclear doctrine and war planning and how knowledge of strategic considerations is fundamental to proper legal analysis. We argue that the principle of proportionality can permit “counter-force” targeting— most clearly when such attacks can prevent or significantly reduce the expected damage to U.S. and allied populations with lower foreign collateral damage. We also argue that the legal requirement to take “feasible precautions” to protect non-combatants means the U.S. must use conventional weapons or the lowest yield nuclear weapons possible in any counterforce attack. Finally, we contend that the prohibition against deliberate targeting of civilians has gained the status of customary international law and that the U.S. government should therefore reverse its traditional position and reject the doctrine of “belligerent reprisal” against foreign civilians. This prohibition means that it is illegal for the United States, contrary to what is implied in the 2018 NPR and explicitly maintained by prominent U.S. Air Force lawyers, to either intentionally target civilians in reprisal to a strike against U.S. or allied civilians, or launch attacks against legitimate military targets if the intent to is cause incidental civilian harm.

Speaker's Biography:

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Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Learning from a Disaster: Improving Nuclear Safety and Security after Fukushima (Stanford University Press, 2016) with Edward D. Blandford and co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Armed and Dangerous: When Dictators Get the Bomb” in Foreign Affairs (November/December 2018); “Not Just a War Theory: American Public Opinion on Ethics in Combat” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Studies Quarterly (Fall 2018); The Korean Missile Crisis” in Foreign Affairs (November/December 2017); “Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran: What Americans Really Think About Using Nuclear Weapons and Killing Noncombatants” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Summer 2017); and “Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons” with Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino in the American Political Science Review (February 2013).

In 2018, Sagan received the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.

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Senior Lecturer Weiner is director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law and co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2003, Weiner served as legal counselor to the U.S. Embassy in The Hague and attorney adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. He was a law clerk to Judge John Steadman of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.