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.

Abstract: It has been more than a decade since the UN Security Council enacted Resolution 1540—the most far-reaching of international instruments to counter Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) terrorism. It requires states to adopt and enforce effective laws to keep WMD materials outside the reach of terrorists. Scholars and policy makers compliment 1540 for making WMD trafficking illegal, for raising awareness of threats and increasing states’ capacity to reduce them. In 2017, one hundred and seventy-six states reported to the UN on domestic measures they took to comply with 1540. These numbers may produce a false sense of confidence in universal implementation of 1540. The threat of WMD terrorism remains potent. Allegations of ISIS using mustard agents against the Kurds, North Korea shipping chemicals to Syria or middlemen trafficking nuclear materials via Moldova suggest that the international response to WMD smuggling has not achieved its desired results. It is, therefore, important to evaluate the UN’s role in preventing WMD terrorism, and explore ways to further strengthen it. Drawing on interviews, fieldwork and observation data, this talk will examine the 1540 regime’s setup and its performance. It will outline policy options to improve the international counter-proliferation and counter-terrorism regime.

Speaker  bio:  Sarah Shirazyan is a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. Her research is funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She received her Doctor of Juridical Sciences Degree from Stanford Law School. Her dissertation empirically analyzes the effectiveness of the UN Security Council Resolution 1540 in preventing terrorists from accessing Weapons of Mass Destruction. Sarah designed Interpol-Stanford policy lab and serves as a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School. For her outstanding research, teaching and community service, Stanford named Ms. Shirazyan as one of the recipients of Gerald J. Lieberman Award.

In addition to her academic experience, Sarah has held multiple posts with leading tech companies and international organizations. Sarah worked at Facebook’s Global Policy Team, where she developed company’s engagement strategies with inter-governmental organizations. Ms. Shirazyan also designed the data protection and privacy curricula for legal professionals at the Council of Europe. Prior to that, Ms. Shirazyan was a Drafting Lawyer for the European Court of Human Rights; worked on nuclear security issues at the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs; and handled international drug cartel investigation cases at the INTERPOL Secretariat. 

Abstract: In the last 30 years I have been actively involved in various safety assessment exercises for high level and low and intermediate level nuclear waste disposal sites, mainly for the Swedish SKB programme but also for a number of European programmes (Spain, France, Finland and the UK). During this time some of these programmes have evolved from pure concepts to actual implementation, some others have remained in the limbo of the generic conceptual projects. The different degrees of development are basically the result of the way the scientific and technical issues have been tackled and more importantly how the implication from society has been implemented in the programmes. In my presentation I will attempt to discuss the various levels of scientific, technological and societal development of the various programmes and their potential correlation with the fulfilment of their objectives.

Speaker bio: Jordi Bruno has a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry by the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm and an Executive MBA from Stanford University. He has over 30 years of experience in the field of nuclear waste management, risk analysis and environmental management strategies. The main areas of expertise include: evaluation of performance and safety of nuclear waste repositories, sustainability, chemical risk assessment and, toxic / hazardous and geological storage of CO2.

From 2008 on, he has been the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Amphos 21 Consulting and from 2009, he has been the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Amphos 21 Group. From 2000 to 2014 he was Director of the Chair Enresa-Amphos 21 on Sustainability and Waste Management in the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).

He is author or co-author of more than 130 peer reviewed papers and five books, as well as many communications to international conferences and technical reports.

Abstract: The safety of a nuclear and any complex system is enhanced by analyzing failures and incorporating the lessons learned into ongoing and future activities.

The triad of hardware, software, and human factors drives nuclear safety. Although each of the 14 reactor core melt incidents that have occurred involved a different reactor design, in none of these cases was the root cause a failure of a major component or an error in analysis. In the six major core melts with which I am most familiar, human factors--the interface of human beings with the hardware and software--played a surprisingly important and under-appreciated role in accident initiation or progression.

The pattern revealed by these analyses of accidents implies that human factors must be better evaluated and integrated into nuclear designs. Several examples of failure modes and the role played by human factors in these accidents are discussed.

Speaker Bio: Milton Levenson started his nuclear work on the Manhattan Project in January 1944. His first assignment was in the development of the barrier for the Gaseous Diffusion plant. Later that year he was transferred to what is now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to work on chemical separations projects.

In 1948 he joined the Argonne National Laboratory as part of the Atomic Energy Agency relocation of nuclear reactor research. He eventually became Argonne’s Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and the Environment.

In 1973 he joined the newly formed Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) as director of nuclear power. In 1980 when President Reagan appointed Kenneth Davis the Deputy Secretary of Energy, Levenson joined the Bechtel Corporation in the role vacated by Davis.

In 1990 he retired from Bechtel. He continues to consult and currently is one of the six Senior Technical Advisors (STA) to the Nuclear Explosives Division (NED) of DoE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

Much of his career has involved safety. He was personally involved in the aftermath of six of the 14 core melt events. He was asked to take charge of the 100 technical staff assembled at TMI to provide technical support to the utility staff. He was extensively involved with Chernobyl, co-chairing with Dr. Velikov, Gorbachev's Science Advisor, a detailed review of the cause of the accident. He chaired the Argonne Safety Committee that reviewed the EBR 1 accident, the Borax 1 experiment, and the SL 1 project. He had secondary roles in connection with the Lucens and Fermi 1 accidents.

Levenson is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has served on 30 National Academy studies and chaired 12 of them. He is a recipient of the Robert E. Wilson Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineering for contributions to nuclear chemical engineering.  He received a special award from the American Nuclear Society for work defining the Source Term, the basic value that largely determines the consequences of nuclear accidents.