Stanford University

Thomas Isaacs: Is nuclear the fuel of the 21st century, or a relic of the past?

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
The 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 set in motion one of the largest nuclear disasters in almost three decades. It also renewed the debate over the future of nuclear energy in the U.S. and abroad. With 104 nuclear power plants across the country, generating about 20 percent of America's energy, there is no doubt that we are currently dependent on nuclear energy, yet the debate over this highly contentious technology is far from resolved. At the World Affairs Council of Northern California, Thomas Isaacs discussed what this disaster means for the future of U.S. energy.
All News button
1

Powering America: Does Nuclear Have a Future?

CISAC's Tom Isaacs participated in a discussion on nuclear energy in America for the World Affairs Council Northern California. 

Event Description:

The 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 set in motion one of the largest nuclear disasters in almost three decades. It also renewed the debate over the future of nuclear energy in the US and abroad. With 104 nuclear power plants across the country, generating about 20 percent of America's energy, there is no doubt that we are currently dependent on nuclear energy, yet the debate over this highly contentious technology is far from resolved. The three panelists will discuss what this disaster means for the future of US energy. How will the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant shape future energy policies and public opinion, and are there existing renewable technologies capable of fulfilling the world’s energy needs? Will nuclear energy be the fuel of the 21st century, or a relic of the past?

Listen to the talk by clicking the link below. 

V. John White Executive Director Speaker Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies
Per F. Peterson Chair Speaker Department of Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley

Thomas Isaacs

0
Affiliate
T_Isaacs.jpg

Tom is Co-Principal Investigator for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Developing Spent Fuel Strategies (DSFS) project coordinating international cooperation on issues at the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle with emphasis on spent fuel management and disposal in Pacific Rim countries. Participants include senior nuclear officials from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Canada, and the United States.

Tom advises national nuclear waste programs on facility siting, communications, stakeholder engagement, and public trust and confidence. He has worked with the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) for 15 years.

Tom was recently named as the Chair of the recently formed Experts Team to support Southern California Edison  at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Previously Tom was a Consulting Professor at CISAC, lead advisor to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, Member of the National Academy of Sciences Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, Director of Planning at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and long time senior executive at the Department of Energy where he led the siting of Yucca Mountain as the nation’s candidate site for a geologic repository.

He has degrees in Engineering, Applied Physics, and Chemical Engineering from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Thomas Isaacs Consulting Professor Speaker CISAC
Seminars

The Battle of Chernobyl (Film Screening and Public Panel)

-

The Battle of Chernobyl

(Russian/Ukraine/USA, 2006; dir. Thomas Johnson; 93 min.)

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

7:00 pm - 9:00 pm (*NEW TIME*)
Cubberly Auditorium

Free and open to the public 

On April 26, 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian city of Pripyat exploded and began spewing radioactive smoke and gas. More than 40,000 residents in the immediate area were exposed to fallout a hundred times greater than that from the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Based on top-secret government documents that came to light only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1999, The Battle of Chernobyl reveals a systematic cover-up of the true scope of the disaster, including the possibility of a secondary explosion of the still-smoldering magma, whose radioactive clouds would have rendered Europe uninhabitable.

Co-sponsored by the School of Education, Crothers Global Citizenship, Stanford Continuing Studies, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the Stanford Film Society

 

For more information, visit the CREEES Event Website.

Cubberley Auditorium

Jasmina Bojic Lecturer in International Relations and UNAFF Founder and Director Moderator
Masahiko Ichihara Japanese Visiting Scholar at Stanford Panelist
Herbert L. Abrams Professor Emeritus of Radiology, Stanford School of Medicine; Member-in-residence, CISAC Panelist
Thomas Johnson Filmmaker Panelist
Conferences

Symposium about the March 2011 Tohoku, Japan, Earthquake

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Please join us on The Great Tohoku, Japan Disaster - Symposium Iand The Great Tohoku, Japan Disaster - Symposium II for two evenings devoted to an examination of and conversation about the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake in northern Honshu, Japan, and the subsequent tsunami and nuclear accident. In talks and panel discussions, experts from the School of Earth Sciences and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies will focus on what happened, the impacts of the events, and what the future holds for Japan and other earthquake- and tsunami-zone regions of the world.

All News button
1

The Great Tohoku, Japan Disaster

-

Please join us on April 25 and 26 for two evenings devoted to an examination of and conversation about the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake in northern Honshu, Japan, and the subsequent tsunami and nuclear accident. In talks and panel discussions, experts from the School of Earth Sciences and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies will focus on what happened, the impacts of the events, and what the future holds for Japan and other earthquake- and tsunami-zone regions of the world.

APRIL 25 PARTICIPANTS

Moderator:

Pamela A. Matson is the Chester Naramore Dean of the Stanford University School of Earth Sciences, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies at Stanford, and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment.

Panelists:

Gregory Beroza is the Wayne Loel Professor in the Stanford University School of Earth Sciences and chair of the Department of Geophysics. He works to develop and apply techniques for analyzing seismograms—recordings of seismic waves—in order to understand how earthquakes work and the hazard they pose to engineered structures.

Gregory G. Deierlein is the John A. Blume Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the Blume Earthquake Engineering Center at Stanford. His research focuses on improving limit states design of constructed facilities through the development and application of nonlinear structural analysis methods and performance-based design criteria.

Katherine Marvel is the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) Perry Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford. Her research interests include energy security and nuclear nonproliferation, renewable energy technologies, energy security, nuclear power and nonproliferation, sustainable development, and public understanding of science.

For more information, please visit the symposium website.

William R. Hewlett Teaching Center
Auditorium 200
370 Serra Mall
Stanford Campus

Pamela A. Matson Dean of the School of Earth Sciences, Goldman Professor of Geological and Environmental Sciences and FSI Senior Fellow Moderator Stanford University
Gregory Beroza Chair Panelist Department of Geophysics, Stanford University
Gregory G. Deierlein Director Panelist Blume Earthquake Engineering Center, Stanford University
Katherine D. Marvel Perry Fellow Panelist Center of International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University
Symposiums

Japan's Nuclear Crisis: An Update and New Perspectives

-

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Edward Blandford Postdoctoral Fellow, CISAC Panelist

Lynn Eden

Not in residence

0
Affiliate
rsd15_078_0365a.jpg PhD

Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.

In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.

CV
Lynn Eden Senior Research Scholar & Associate Director for Research, CISAC Moderator
Charles Perrow Visiting Professor, CISAC; Professor Emeritus, Sociology, Yale University Speaker
Chaim Braun Consulting Professor, CISAC Speaker
Panel Discussions
Subscribe to Japan