Special CISAC Seminar 

Stephen Craig

Recipient of The Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research 

“Tamed Tiger or Restless Beast? German Foreign Policy in the Post-Unification Period”

&

Clay Ramel

Recipient of The William J. Perry Prize 

“Reconsidering the Roots of Crude Coercion: a Policymaking Analysis of “the Oil Weapon””

This presentation will describe the NRC’s mission, the traditional approach to regulation of nuclear power facilities, and the NRC’s more recent use of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) in regulation. The presentation will also explore uncertainties in PRA and the role they play in NRC decision making.

About the speaker: The Honorable George Apostolakis was sworn in as a Commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on April 23, 2010, to a term ending on June 30, 2014.

Dr. Apostolakis has had a distinguished career as an engineer, professor and risk analyst. Before joining the NRC, he was a professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and a professor of Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was also a member and former Chairman of the statutory Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards of the NRC.

In 2007, Dr. Apostolakis was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "innovations in the theory and practice of probabilistic risk assessment and risk management." He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal Reliability Engineering and System Safety and is the founder of the International Conferences on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management. He received the Tommy Thompson Award for his contributions to improvement of reactor safety in 1999 and the Arthur Holly Compton Award in Education in 2005 from the American Nuclear Society.

Dr. Apostolakis is an internationally recognized expert in risk assessment. He has published more than 120 papers in technical journals and has made numerous presentations at national and international conferences. He has edited or co-edited eight books and conference proceedings and has participated in many probabilistic risk assessment courses and reviews.

Dr. Apostolakis received his diploma in electrical engineering from the National Technical University in Athens, Greece in 1969. He earned a master's degree in engineering science in 1970 and a Ph.D. in engineering science and applied mathematics in 1973, both from the California Institute of Technology.

In October 1986, a historic summit meeting was held at Reykjavik, Iceland, between the United States, under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan, and the Soviet Union, under the leadership of President Mikhail Gorbachev. What began as a summit with an agenda of limited reduction of nuclear weapons and human rights quickly transformed into a discussion by the two leaders advocating for elimination of all nuclear weapons. The prospect of a world without nuclear weapons had never before been held at such a high level and has never been held since. These negotiations were truly historic and in many ways groundbreaking in helping to end the Cold War.

Reykjavik, a one-act play, written by Richard Rhodes, is a dialogue taken from the actual transcripts of the negotiations between the two presidents. Rhodes is the author or editor of twenty-four works of history, memoir, and fiction, including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. A past visiting scholar at MIT and Harvard University, he is presently an associate of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. 

The play runs for seventy-five minutes and will be followed by a question-and-answer session on May 8 with Richard Rhodes and on May 9 with a panel of nuclear security experts led by Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists.

This program is co-sponsored by the Federation of American Scientists, the Fund for Peace Initiatives, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Bowen H. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, and Stanford Continuing Studies.

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website. 

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website. 

Karl Eikenberry is the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Within FSI he is an affiliated faculty member with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and an affiliated researcher with the Europe Center. Before coming to Stanford, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 to July 2011, where he led the civilian side of the surge directed by President Obama to reverse Taliban momentum and help set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty.

Prior to his appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a 35-year career with the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant General in 2009.  His operational posts include service in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan, where he served as Commander of the American-led Coalition Forces from 2005-2007.

Ambassador Eikenberry also served in various political-military positions, including service as Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels.

His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman badges, and master parachutist wings. He has received numerous civilian awards as well.

Amb. Eikenberry is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, holds master's degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Stanford University in Political Science, and was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

He is a trustee of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Council of American Ambassadors. He recently received the George F. Kennan Award for Distinguished Public Service from the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. He has published numerous articles on U.S. military training, tactics, and strategy and on Chinese military history and Asia-Pacific security issues.