This article originally appeared in the Ukrainian journal Novoye Vremya.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may meet President Donald Trump this weekend in Warsaw and is expected to travel to the United States later in the fall.  This gives Mr. Zelenskyy the opportunity to reinforce Kyiv’s relationship with the United States.  It also offers the opportunity to try to establish a connection to Mr. Trump, something that has proven elusive for most foreign leaders.  Here are a few suggestions for Mr. Zelenskyy on dealing with the American president.

Mr. Zelenskyy should bear in mind that Mr. Trump lacks a strong grasp of the U.S. interest in and what is at stake with regard to Ukraine and the conflict that Russia wages against it.  His administration has pursued sensible policies in supporting Kyiv, strengthening NATO and sustaining sanctions on Moscow.  By all appearances, however, Mr. Trump does not instinctively agree with the necessity of his administration’s own policies.  Witness his recent suggestion about inviting Vladimir Putin to join with other G7 leaders when he hosts the G7 summit next year.

Mr. Trump is not detail-oriented.  He reportedly reads little, leading White House staff to resort to graphs and pictures to capture his attention.  The smart way to approach Mr. Trump is to avoid detail, sticking instead with a few clear and easily understood themes.

Flattering the American president would not hurt.  North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appears to have mastered that.  North Korea has reduced none of its nuclear or ballistic missile capabilities—in fact, they have increased—but Mr. Trump swoons over Mr. Kim’s letters and professes not to be bothered by Pyongyang’s shorter range ballistic missile tests.

That said, keep expectations for flattery modest.  No European leader invested more heavily in flattering Mr. Trump than former British Prime Minister Theresa May.  She gave him a state visit in June with all the bells and whistles.  Yet Mr. Trump could not resist sending a series of tweets denigrating her handling of the Brexit conundrum and all but welcoming her replacement.

This underscores the point that, in many foreign policy relationships, Mr. Trump is transactional.  He will be asking what can America get, or what can he get.

Mr. Zelenskyy thus should consider whether there is a topic on which he could offer Mr. Trump a win-win.  Progress toward resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donbas could provide such an issue.  Real movement toward peace would be a major win for Kyiv, but it could offer Mr. Trump a win as well.  He has repeatedly made clear his desire for improved U.S.-Russia relations, and a genuine settlement in Donbas could lift the biggest obstacle to his goal.

The question is how to shape a proposal to accomplish this.  Bringing Mr. Trump into the current Normandy negotiating format in a way that made it appear as if Mr. Trump sparked a breakthrough would appeal to the Nobel Prize-hungry American president.

However, the key to peace in Donbas lies in Moscow.  The Kremlin seems interested in sustaining a simmering conflict as a means to pressure the government in Kyiv.  Still, aligning interests with Mr. Trump on pressing for peace would be a plus for Mr. Zelenskyy.

While in the United States, the Ukrainian president should not neglect the Congressional leadership.  Both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill support Ukraine and display considerable skepticism toward Russia.  Congress could serve as a check on Mr. Trump should he choose to pursue his less well-thought-out ideas on Russia.

Mr. Zelenskyy’s American interlocutors in Congress want Ukraine to succeed, with success measured by its progress in becoming a normal democratic, market-oriented and prosperous European state.  In the past, developments in Ukraine have disappointed both Ukrainians and the country’s friends in the West.  To the extent that Mr. Zelenskyy can make a persuasive case that this time it is different—that he and the new parliament will take the tough steps to achieve success—he will return home having forged a stronger basis for the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship.  He can bolster his case by coming to Washington with one or two signature reforms under his belt, such as an end to the moratorium on sales of private agricultural land.

One last piece of advice.  Mr. Zelenskyy and his team should be wary of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to drag Ukraine into U.S. domestic politics.  That would risk making Ukraine a partisan political issue in America, which could undermine the bipartisan support that Ukraine has enjoyed since regaining independence in 1991.

* * * * *

Steven Pifer is a William Perry fellow at Stanford University and a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

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The Stanford China Scholars Program (CSP) is about to launch its fifth session this fall, with 20 high school students from across the country participating in the online course. The Northeast, South, Midwest, Pacific Northwest, Texas, and California are all represented in this cohort of 10^th through 12^th graders. Thursday evenings, these high school students will log in and join a real-time session with a scholar from Stanford or another university to discuss an aspect of contemporary China—the U.S.–China trade war, perhaps, or the legacy of the Mao era, or internet censorship and surveillance technologies in China, or China’s efforts to combat pollution and climate change. The rest of the week is filled with readings on that theme, discussed online with classmates.

The Stanford CSP’s focus on contemporary China means that the course material is constantly changing, to keep up with the ever-shifting political landscape under the leadership of Xi and Trump. It also requires the students to engage with the idea of China as not only a thoroughly modern nation but a forward-looking one, challenging the tendency to essentialize China as an ancient civilization mired in the past. Former CSP student Angela Yang (Fall 2018) credits the online course with helping her “contextualize China’s transformation as it’s happening, which is something you wouldn’t really be able to study in any other kind of course.”

Although all of the high school students are exceptionally well prepared academically, their background knowledge on China at the beginning of the online course varies considerably. Some bring strong knowledge of international issues generally, but little specific to China; some have already studied China in some depth. A few come from Chinese families, and a third to a half of the students have been studying Chinese language for several years.

Over the past year, attention has gravitated towards the U.S.–China trade war, perhaps inevitably, and its roots and possible outcomes, as well as the PRC’s ramping up of censorship and surveillance technologies, particularly in Xinjiang. Yet overall, discussions with our guest experts and among the students are fundamentally optimistic: constructive change is possible, and the United States and China have far more to gain from peace than from conflict.

The students round out the program with an independent research paper. Students’ chosen research topics in 2018–19 were as diverse as they were. Example research papers included a discussion of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as it applies to China’s claims in the South China Sea; the mental health of rural “left-behind” children; China’s economic expansion in Africa; rock ‘n’ roll in the democracy movement of the 1980s; the international effects of China’s restrictions on imported waste for recycling; and many others. 

In synthesizing knowledge this diverse, students come to understand just how complex China and the challenges it faces are. They can no longer reduce China to simple generalizations. “The truth is that all of China’s problems aren’t just limited to numbers, statistics or graphs,” Junhee Park (CSP Spring 2018) wrote in response to a documentary film on migrant workers. “They affect everyone of us, whether we are Chinese or not.”

To be notified when the next China Scholars Program application period opens, join our email list or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

The China Scholars Program is one of several online courses for high school students offered by SPICE, Stanford University, including the Sejong Scholars Program (on Korea) and the Reischauer Scholars Program (on Japan).

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SPICE’s Stanford e-Japan Manager and Instructor Waka Takahashi Brown has won the 2019 Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award for her teaching excellence with Stanford e-Japan, an online course that introduces U.S. society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations to high school students in Japan. Stanford e-Japan is currently supported by the Yanai Tadashi Foundation. Initial funding for Stanford e-Japan was provided by the U.S.-Japan Foundation. Brown will formally accept the award at a ceremony at Stanford University on December 5, 2019.

“Waka walks in the footsteps of Elgin Heinz as a key leader in educating the next generation about the U.S.–Japan relationship,” stated David Janes, Chair of the Board, EngageAsia. Janes has overseen the Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award since its inception in 2001.

Read the full article.

EngageAsia administers the Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award, which is funded by the United States-Japan Foundation. The Award recognizes exceptional teachers who further mutual understanding between Americans and Japanese. The 2019 Award focused on the humanities and the 2020 Award is expected to focus on Japanese language. It is named in honor of Elgin Heinz for his commitment to educating students about Asia as well as for the inspiration he has provided to the field of pre-collegiate education.

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James Green, former Minister Counselor for Trade Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, gave a talk titled “U.S.-China Diplomacy: 40 Years of What’s Worked and What has Not” before a Stanford China Program audience on May 6. Green is currently Senior Research Fellow at Georgetown University and is the creator of the new U.S.-China Dialogue Podcast, which features in-depth interviews with approximately two dozen former U.S. ambassadors, cabinet-level secretaries and other senior officials who were at the forefront of U.S.-China negotiations.

He recounts salient takeaways from these conversations regarding pivotal moments in U.S.-China relations, including normalization of relations, anti-Soviet cooperation in the 1980s, Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-1996, WTO accession in 2001, Belgrade bombing and EP-3 incident in 1999 and 2001, respectively; global financial crisis of 2008, the Beijing Olympics and the current U.S.-China trade tensions.  Among his many motivations for beginning this podcast series include his desire to question the notion circulating among U.S. foreign policy experts today that U.S. policy of engagement towards China had somehow failed. To Green, who has been active in U.S.-China relations since the mid-1990’s, U.S. policy had never been about transforming China from a one-Party, authoritarian system into a liberal democracy. In order to more accurately pinpoint what U.S. goals have been, Green stated, he undertook the project and interviewed those who had played key roles during pivotal moments in U.S.-China bilateral relations.

His interviewees have included, among others, such luminaries as Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, who in 1978 participated in secret negotiations that led to the establishment of U.S.-P.R.C. diplomatic relations; John Negroponte, first director of national intelligence and deputy secretary of state in the late 2000s during China’s rise; and Ambassador Michael Froman, former U.S. Trade Representative under President Obama. His talk at the Stanford China Program includes key lessons he has derived from these interviews even as we enter into one of the most volatile times in U.S.-China bilateral relations.

The recording and transcript are available below.  

Many primary-care physicians continue to join multispecialty group practices, such as the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and Stanford Health Care, instead of working in their own solo practices or in practices with only other primary care doctors.

Physicians in practices of nine or fewer dropped from 40% in 2013 to 35% in 2015; the rate of those in practices of 100 or more increased from 30% to 35% during the same period.

But is this growing trend having a positive impact on health-care use and spending?

Stanford Health Policy’s Loren Baker and Kate Bundorf set out to find a few answers.

In their new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, they focused on Medicare beneficiaries who changed their primary care physician when they moved from one area to another. They focused on people who switched from a doctor in a primary-care-only practice to one in a multispecialty practice, and those who made the opposite switch.

They then compared changes in health-care use and spending before and after the move — and among patients who switch practice types and those who do not.

“We wanted to look at people who experienced an abrupt change in their primary care physician for reasons other than an explicit choice to change their physician,” Bundorf said.

“A weakness of this approach is that they may differ from people who don’t move,” said Bundorf, an associate professor of health research and policy at Stanford Medicine and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). “But our descriptive statistics suggest that we capture a broad cross-section of types of people.”

They identified 119,272 patients who moved from one area to another and used data from Medicare claims from 1999 to 2010.

The results were striking

The results of the analysis show that multispecialty practice decreased annual medical spending by $1,600 per Medicare beneficiary — a 35% reduction in spending.

“The size of the result is very intriguing,” said Baker, a professor of health research and policy at Stanford Medicine and also a SIEPR senior fellow. “We are often happy when a change in health-care delivery can help achieve savings of even a few percentage points, but our results suggest the potential here is much larger than that.”

With their co-author Anne B. Royalty of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, they found the results were driven primarily by changes in hospital expenditures and are concentrated among patients with two or more chronic condition. This suggests multispecialty practices improve care delivery by reducing hospitalizations among relatively sick patients.

“The results imply that, while research has shown the potential for physician consolidation to increase prices in some settings, large multispecialty groups also have the potential to lower costs,” the authors wrote.

Baker said when they set out to do this research, they were not sure what they would find. 

“The results suggest that the way care is organized can be important for health-care delivery and that there may be organizational changes that could help us better manage spending.”

Larger practices don’t always lead to better health outcomes

While the pervasive view underlying the move toward consolidated practices is that larger, more integrated organizations provide care more efficiently through greater coordination of care, the literature on physician integration largely does not support this view. 

The authors point to a study that looked at data from the 1970s to 2013, which found little evidence that these larger practices improve the quality and lower the cost of health care. 

“The hope of many policymakers was that the larger, multispecialty organizations could organize care more efficiently,” Bundorf said. “Yet there is little evidence to date that larger practices have generated these types of benefits for patients. Since the literature has not taken a hard look at the single or multispecialty side of things, we wanted to investigate that here.”

While the trend is toward these big multispecialty practices, many physicians choose to remain in smaller or solo ones.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that there are some 139,000 primary care physicians in the United States. Despite the transition to multispecialty practices, some 40% of physicians continue to work in solo practice or a small group of two-to-nine physicians.

It’s important, they said, to continue examining the health-care spending of all practice sizes.

“We are very curious to continue work on ways to learn more about how organizations achieve savings,” Baker said. “We are also excited to continue thinking about opportunities for policies that would encourage the formation of effective practices, for example through payment policy reforms.

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 year, the Sejong Korean Scholars Program (SKSP) concluded its sixth year with its largest cohort of 22 students from across the United States. The SKSP is an intensive online course offered by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) at Stanford University for exceptional U.S. high school students who want to engage in an in-depth study of Korea, exploring its history, religion, culture, and relationship with the United States. Students who successfully complete the course earn credit from the Stanford Continuing Studies Program and a Certificate of Completion from SPICE, Stanford University.

Each year from March to June, students in the SKSP online course carry out rigorous coursework that consists of weekly readings, online lectures, assignments, discussion posts, and “virtual classroom” video conferencing sessions, where students engage in live discussion with each other and a guest speaker who is an expert-scholar on the topic of the week. As their culminating final project, students write independent research papers which are printed in journal format at the conclusion of the course.

The SKSP online course offers a unique opportunity for high school students to study Korea and U.S.–Korean relations in a college-level-type course that draws on the wealth of expertise and scholarship on Korean Studies at Stanford University. Top scholars, experts, and former diplomats at Stanford University as well as other universities in the United States provide thematically organized online lectures. The themes for each week include traditional Korean culture, religion, colonial history, the Korean War, post-war recovery, North Korea, modern South Korean society and its educational system, and Korea’s transnationalism. In addition to the recorded online lectures, the guest speakers for the weekly virtual classroom sessions engage in discussions with students and provide answers to their questions.

The co-instructors for the course, as well as guest speakers, often note the quality and maturity of students’ thoughtful insights and questions. Co-instructor HyoJung Jang has noted that “the talented and engaged high school students who participate in the SKSP online course bring their intellectual curiosity, critical thinking skills, and enthusiasm for learning about Korea and its popular culture. On top of their full academic load at their respective high schools across the country, these students go above and beyond to commit to SKSP’s demanding coursework and participate fully in the course as Korea scholars-in-training.”

“Over the past four months, our students have formed a community where they actively engage in intellectual discussions with each other—exchanging their ideas, thoughts, reflections, experiences, and perspectives on various topics,” commented co-instructor Jonas Edman. “For instance, some students contributed their own interpretations and explanations for the stark difference between the Taiwanese colonial experience and memory of Japanese rule and that of Korea. When discussing the issue of ‘comfort women’ during Japanese colonial rule in Korea, one student shared a personal story about his great-great-grandmother’s similarly painful experience under foreign rule in Eastern Europe and powerfully advocated for the importance of justice. Other students shared about their assessments of the roles of the U.S. and South Korean leaders—in addition to the roles played by North Korea, China, and Russia—on the outbreak of the Korean War and its aftermath.”

Alongside their academic engagement with each other, students have also bonded over their shared interests in Korean food and popular culture, namely “K-pop, K-dramas, and K-movies.” Some students chose to write their final research papers on analyzing Korean popular culture. Other discussions on the modern Korean education system have even incorporated students’ personal observations of the education issues portrayed in a popular Korean drama. These interests are encouraged, as students are urged to creatively explore the topics most interesting to them for their final research paper.

One of the strengths of the SKSP online course is that it encourages high school students to consider different perspectives on various issues, think critically about those different perspectives, and develop their own informed opinions. Reflecting on her participation in the course, Chloee Robison, a high school student from Indiana, said, “SKSP was a unique opportunity to explore my interest in Korean history. Even though I am not of Korean heritage, I felt deeply connected to the course material, and I found the lectures to be quite informative and engaging. Coming from a region that is largely homogeneous, hearing the perspectives of diverse-minded students opened my eyes to issues and ideas that I would have otherwise been blind to. I am so grateful to everyone involved in the course, and I would recommend it to all students who wish to challenge themselves and expand their knowledge of Korean history and culture.” Chloee’s research project on Korea’s March First Movement earned first place in Indiana’s National History Day competition.

The popularity and demand for Stanford’s SKSP online course on Korea grows each year. Interested high school students are encouraged to apply early for the program. The application period is between late August and early October each year for enrollment in the online course the following year. The online application can be found on the SPICE website at sejongscholars.org.

To be notified when the next Sejong Korean Scholars Program application period opens, join our email list or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

The Sejong Korean Scholars Program is one of several online courses for high school students offered by SPICE, Stanford University, including the China Scholars Program, the Reischauer Scholars Program (on Japan), and the Stanford e-Japan Program.

Related article:

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Applications open today for the Fall 2019 session of the Stanford University Scholars Program for Japanese High School Students (also known as “Stanford e-Japan”), which will run from October 1, 2019 to February 21, 2020. The deadline to apply is August 1, 2019.

Stanford e-Japan Program for high school students in Japan
Fall 2019 session (October 2019 to February 2020)
Application period: June 24 to August 1, 2019

All applications must be submitted at https://spicestanford.smapply.io/prog/stanford_e-japan/ via the SurveyMonkey Apply platform. Applicants and recommenders will need to create a SurveyMonkey Apply account to proceed. Students who are interested in applying to the online course are encouraged to begin their applications early.

Accepted applicants will engage in an intensive study of U.S. society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations. Ambassadors, top scholars, and experts from Stanford University and throughout the United States provide web-based lectures and engage students in live discussion sessions.

“[The Stanford e-Japan online course] was an exceptional opportunity to assimilate fresh insights on U.S.–Japan relations and produce my own ideas via active discussion,” reflects Anna Oura, a recent alum of the program. “Every week I would excitedly wait for Saturday 13:00, when I would meet my fellow scholars—virtually—and exchange opinions.”

Stanford e-Japan is offered by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), Stanford University. The Fall 2019 session of Stanford e-Japan is generously supported by the Yanai Tadashi Foundation, Tokyo, Japan.

For more information about Stanford e-Japan, please visit stanfordejapan.org.

To stay informed of news about Stanford e-Japan and SPICE’s other student programs, join our email list or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

SPICE offers separate courses for U.S. high school students. For more information, please visit the Reischauer Scholars Program (on Japan), the Sejong Scholars Program (on Korea), and the China Scholars Program (on China).

Related articles:

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• Japan Day 2018: Recognizing future leaders in the U.S.–Japan relationship

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