Nuclear fuel supply assurance is a long-term issue that has been studied in various venues since the beginning of the nuclear area. This topic has recently gained greater urgency with various countries now embarking on their own nuclear power programs and considering construction of their own fuel cycle facilities, including enrichment plants, to provide for their own fuel. Some of these fuel facilities could however be diverted for weapons material production within clandestine military programs. In this context the assured provision of internationally supplied nuclear fuel and fuel supply guarantees are meant to discourage new nuclear countries from developing domestic sensitive fuel cycle facilities. An IAEA initiative on this topic has culminated in a September 2006 IAEA Special Event Seminar held in conjunction with the 50th General Conference. Eleven different proposals for instituting fuel supply assurance arrangements were presented (some prior to and some during) the meeting. Noted among them was the NTI proposal that included a commitment from Warren Buffet to contribute 50 Million Dollars towards the purchase of a Uranium stockpile that would form the basis of a Nuclear Fuel Bank to be managed by the IAEA.

In this presentation I will review and comment on the recent supply assurance proposals made. I will discuss technical and institutional issues I have raised in reviewing these proposals, and I will rank all the proposals based on their ease of implementation and contribution to nonproliferation.

Chaim Braun is a CISAC science fellow working on issues of nuclear power and nonproliferation. Prior to his Stanford position, Braun worked in various technical and management positions in Altos Management Partners, Bechtel Power Corporation, United Engineers and Constructors, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). While at CISAC Chaim authored papers with Chris Chyba on "Proliferation Rings" and with Mike May on "International Regime for Fresh Fuel Supply and Spent Fuel Disposal." He also co-authored two chapters in the CISAC book , U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy: Confronting Today's Threats, made numerous technical presentations, and was instrumental in bringing to CISAC the research project on U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540.

The speaker will present European views on current nuclar issues (deterrence, proliferation) and their implications for U.S. policy.

Bruno Tertrais is a senior research fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS), as well as an associate researcher at the Centres d'études et de recherches internationales (CERI). He is also a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and contributing editor to Survival. His latest book is War Without End (New York: The New Press, 2005).

The prospect of civil nuclear cooperation between the United States and India has stirred controversy for its potential impact on nuclear proliferation. I will discuss the origins or the U.S.-India nuclear deal, its current political prospects in the United States and India, and evaluate its impact on the nonproliferation regime. My talk will be based on part on the report U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation: A Strategy for Moving Forward.

Michael Levi is a fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He was previously a science and technology fellow at the Brookings Institution. Levi is the author of two books, The Future of Arms Control (Brookings, 2005, with Michael O'Hanlon), and Rethinking Nuclear Terrorism (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).

The siting and construction of high-level biocontainment facilities involves a complex review process with environmental impact documents, legally mandated reviews, and public involvement in decision making about associated risks. In some cases, serious public opposition and legal challenges may arise during the review and approval stages of a project. The recent proposed construction of NIH-NIAID regional and national biocontainment labs provided an opportunity for a real-time study of the review and approval processes associated with labs in many different locations. By analyzing environmental impact documents, mass media coverage, internet communications, and detailed timelines at the various labs, it was possible to identify common issues and features associated with labs in general, as well as specific concerns associated with those where public controversies and opposition arose. The study focused on both good and bad experiences at various recently proposed lab sites and compared them with other past case examples to identify 'lessons learned' that are relevant to both current and future biocontainment projects. Overall, the study documented the continuing importance of trust, transparency, and due process in public decision making and highlighted the importance of developing and implementing a comprehensive pro-active risk communication strategy at the earliest stages of project planning. The study also documented indications of public insecurity associated with biodefense research, which may translate into future problems for public health researchers.

Margaret Race is an ecologist working with NASA through the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. She recently completed a study on public decision making and risk communication associated with the construction of BSL-3 and BSL-4 biocontainment labs nationwide. The study, which was begun during a fellowship at Stanford University and CISAC, reflects her longstanding interest in risk perceptions, legal and societal issues, public communication and education associated with controversial science and technological proposals. In her work with NASA, she focuses on planetary protection and the search for extraterrestrial life--which will someday involve construction of a BSL-4 biocontainment lab for handling and testing scientific samples returned from Mars and other solar system locaitons. During the past decade, she has been a lead member of an international team of researchers that helped NASA develop a protocol for the quarantine, handling, and testing of extraterrestrial samples from Mars. She has served on numerous National Resource Council studies analyzing risk communication and societal issues associated environmental protection on Earth and in space. Dr. Race received her BA degree in Biology and MS degree in Energy Management and Policy from the University of Pennsylvania, and her Ph.D. in Ecology/Zoology from the University of California at Berkeley. Her teaching and research work has included positions at Stanford University (Human Biology Program), UC Berkeley (Assistant Dean, College of Natural Resources), and Office of the President, University of California (Senior Science Policy Analyst and Director of Planning). She was also a Postdoctoral Fellow in Marine Policy and Ocean Management at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

After considering trends in the role of nuclear weapons and some lessons from history, this presentation examines nuclear signaling in the context of the evolving role of nuclear weapons (for deterrence and dissuasion, among other purposes) and likely developments of U.S. nuclear forces and their concepts of operation for regional crises. Following the development of a 2015 regional crisis scenario, the utility of potential signaling options are examined in light of current U.S. nuclear force development trends. Options for future U.S. nuclear force and concepts development for signaling as part of overall tailored deterrence are identified and examined.

Owen Price is a consulting visiting fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies International Security Program, on sabbatical until March 2007 from the U.K. Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), where he has worked for 12 years. Most recently, he led a team of systems engineers working on AWE capability programs, work designed to ensure that AWE continues to be able to design and field new warheads of tasked to do so by the British government. From 2000 to 2003, he led the AWE Verification Research Program, was a technical adviser to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and was a member of the U.K. delegation to the Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee Meetings in 2003 and 2004. Price holds an MA in engineering from the University of Cambridge, England, and an MBA in engineering management from the University of Bradford, England. He is currently reading (part time) for an MSc in systems engineering at the U.K. Defense Academy, Cranfield University, Shrivenham, England. He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and is a British national.

Satellites are absolutely essential and extremely vulnerable for national and economic security. How do we deal with this dilemma?

Michael Krepon is co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center and the author or editor of eleven books and over 350 articles. Prior to co-founding the Stimson Center, Krepon worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the Carter administration, and in the U.S. House of Representatives, assisting Congressman Norm Dicks. He receive an MA from the School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and a BA from Franklin & Marshall College. He also studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo, Egypt.

Krepon divides his time between Stimson's South Asia and space security projects. The South Asia project concentrates on escalation control, nuclear risk reduction, confidence building, and peace making between India and Pakistan. This project entails field work, publications, and Washington-based programming, including a visiting fellowship program. The space security project seeks to promote a code of conduct for responsible space-faring nations and works toward stronger international norms for the peaceful uses of outer space.

Bioterrorism is a growing threat. While the U.S. government has spent considerable sums on programs designed to protect the United States from a biological attack, no clear strategy has been articulated to guide planning and expenditures. This talk will present the outlines of a coherent strategy for coping with bioterrorism that includes diplomacy, deterrence and defense, with the emphasis on defense.

Dean Wilkening directs the Science Program at CISAC. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University and spent 13 years at the RAND Corporation prior to coming to Stanford in 1996. His major research interests have been nuclear strategy and policy, arms control, the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, ballistic missile defense, and conventional force modernization. His most recent research focuses on ballistic missile defense and biological terrorism. His work on missile defense focuses on the broad strategic and political implications of deploying national and theater missile defenses, in particular, the impact of theater missile defense in Northeast Asia, and the technical feasibility of boost-phase interceptors for national and theater missile defense. His work on biological weapons focuses on understanding the scientific and technical uncertainties associated with predicting the outcome of hypothetical airborne biological weapon attacks, with the aim of devising more effective civil defenses, and a reanalysis of the accidental anthrax release in 1979 from a Russian military compound in Sverdlovsk with the aim of improving our understanding of the human effects of inhalation anthrax.

Markus Hadler is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Graz, Austria, and currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the Forum on Contemporary Europe. He also is a member of the International Social Survey Programme (www.issp.org).

His current research focuses on the political culture within Europe and the US. The main emphasis is placed on the interaction between macro level characteristics and individual attitudes and behavior. Here, a core research question is whether political attitudes are influenced stronger by modernization processes or by institutional settings. Other research topics are voting behavior, social inequality, mobility, and methods of empirical research. Most of his research is done in an international comparative view. For this purpose survey data are used and related to country characteristics by multilevel analyses.

Professor Hadler will present the paper, "Anatomy of Political Identity: Determinants of Local, National and European Identities 1995-2003", written by Markus Hadler, Kiyoteru Tsutsui and Lynny Chin. The paper examines how individuals' identification with different levels of collectivity varies across countries, groups and individuals within the

context of the expansion of the European Union (EU) since the 1990s.

Presentation abstract:

Europe's political landscape has changed dramatically during the last decades. Consider the breakdown of the communist system, the emergence of new states, and the ongoing integration and enlargement of the European Union (EU).

At an institutional and policy level, the EU's growth and increasing internal unification are without doubt. However, when it comes to individual attitudes, the acceptance of the integration is less clear ­as proven by the rejection of the EU constitution in the Netherlands and France.

This talk analyzes individual attitudes by using survey data spanning the period from the 1980s to 2006. Three common arguments with regard to the individual identification to Europe are discussed: Whether perceived benefits result in a stronger attachment; whether the ongoing integration results in a higher affiliation; and whether knowledge and education promote European identity.

The results show that changes in individual attitudes and the changes at the European level are only loosely coupled in the case of identity. Professor Hadler will discuss how sociological and social psychological explanations offer additional explanations and insights.

Link to paper

Link to speaker CV