Abstract:  Russia is the country that has the largest amount of weapon-usable fissile materials in its disposal, most of which has been produced during the cold war. In the years following the end of the cold war. Russia has undertaken significant effort to downsize its nuclear complex, leading to its serious transformation. This transformation, however, left the basic structure of the nuclear industry, most of the production facilities and most of the fissile material intact. Substantial amounts of weapon-usable fissile materials are still in storage, moved from one facility to another, or used for research and other purposes, creating security risks. Although the dangers associated with continuing presence of weapon material are generally acknowledged, the task of reducing this danger, by either eliminating the material or removing it from circulation and consolidating in a mall number of safe and secure storage sites, has proven difficult. The talk analyses the progress that Russia has made so far in consolidating its weapon-usable materials and describes the challenges that it is facing in further advancing this goal.

Pavel Podvig is a researcher at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. In 2008-09, Podvig is CISAC's acting associate director for research. Before coming to Stanford in 2004, he worked at the Center for Arms Control Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), which was the first independent research organization in Russia dedicated to analysis of technical issues related to arms control and disarmament. In Moscow, Podvig was the leader of a major research project and the editor of the book Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (MIT Press, 2001). In recognition of his work in Russia, the American Physical Society awarded Podvig the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award of 2008 (with Anatoli Diakov). From 2000 to 2004, Podvig worked with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and earlier with the Security Studies Program at MIT. His current research focuses on the Russian strategic forces and nuclear weapons complex, as well as technical and political aspects of nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament, missile defense, and U.S.-Russian arms control process.

Podvig received his degree in physics from MIPT and his PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations. Since 2001, Podvig has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He is a member of the APS Committee on International Freedom of Scientists and is serving as the Chair of the Committee in 2008. 

Ward Wilson is an award-winning scholar living in Trenton, NJ. He has written, studied and read extensively about nuclear weapons issues for more than twenty-five years. After training as a historian at the American University in Washington, DC with a special emphasis on philosophy, he was a Fellow at the Robert Kennedy Memorial Foundation in 1981 where he wrote about nuclear weapons issues. He has been published in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Dissent, the Chicago Tribune, Nonproliferation Review and International Security (among others). His work has been described as "some of the most original and exacting thinking being done about nuclear weapons today." In 2007 he published a ground-breaking study of the bombing of Hiroshima in International Security titled "The Winning Weapon? Rethinking Nuclear Weapons in Light of Hiroshima." The distinguished physicists Freeman Dyson has said that the article "effectively demolishes the generally-accepted myth that the atomic bombings brought World War II to an end." Wilson argues that "Much of what has been written about nuclear weapons is conceptually muddled. A great deal of work is necessary to intellectually recast the field." He advocates an approach rooted in the work of William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein that emphasizes examining the usefulness of nuclear weapons. "The only important question is ‘Are nuclear weapons useful?' If the answer is no, why keep them?" Wilson writes regularly at www.rethinkingnuclearweapons.org.

Barton Bernstein began his current position as Professor of History at Stanford University in 1965, after receiving his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1964. At Stanford, he has served as the director of the History Honors Program, the International Relations program, and the International Policy Studies program. Prof. Bernstein is a member of the American Historical Association, the Conference on Peace Research in History, and has served on the Editorial Advisory Committee for the Nuclear Age Series at Stanford University. He has been awarded numerous grants and research positions, including the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and the Lawrence-Livermore Grant. Prof. Bernstein was a CISAC fellow during the 1985-86 academic year.  Many of Prof. Bernstein's publications and articles have received national acclaim. He co-edited, with Don Kennedy, a series in Modern American History. A beloved professor and prolific author, Prof. Bernstein's research interests include U.S. foreign policy, modern U.S. political history, and science and technology policy. His talk "Why did Japan Surrender in World War II" addresses and challenges false or outdated conceptions of Japan's role in WWII.

Abstract:  Given that even minor changes to our nuclear weapons posture have been rejected as too risky, it is surprising that the baseline risk of our current strategy had not been estimated prior to my March 2008 paper. Even though that paper uses a simplified model which only lower bounds the risk, it is estimated to be thousands of times greater than that associated with a nuclear power plant near your home. The advantages of bringing quantitative risk analysis to bear on this problem will be discussed and next steps proposed.

Martin E. Hellman is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. While best known for his invention with Diffie and Merkle of public key cryptography, he also has a strong concern for averting nuclear war. With Anatoly Gromyko, he co-edited "Breakthrough: Emerging New Thinking," a book which appeared in English and in Russian late in 1987 calling for a long-term process to eliminate the nuclear threat.