A broad scientific and technical consensus has emerged over the last several decades that deep geologic isolation can provide safe and secure disposal for nuclear high level waste and spent fuel. But given the stigma associated with nuclear waste disposal, credible scenarios exist where substantial inventories of high level waste and spent fuel will remain dispersed worldwide in interim surface storage at shut down and abandoned nuclear facilities, rendering these materials vulnerable to theft to recover fissile material and to accidental or intentional dispersion into the environment and transferring a large and unnecessary burden and risks onto future generations. With the detailed review of U.S. policy for managing nuclear waste completed by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future last year, the U.S. is now poised to restart its nuclear waste program. Legislation introduced in the Senate in 2012 provides a framework for a path forward that can address these major issues. This talk will review recommendations made by the BRC, and the current status of the U.S. nuclear waste program including actions likely to occur in the coming year.

Per F. Peterson is the William and Jean McCallum Floyd Professor of Nuclear Engineering in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He grew up in Reno, Nevada, graduating from UNR with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1982. From 1982 to 1985 he worked at Bechtel on high-level nuclear waste processing, and then spent three years to complete masters and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Tokyo Institute of Technology working on topics in heat and mass transfer, he joined the Department of Nuclear Engineering at UC Berkeley in 1990. There he served as a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator from 1990 to 1995; as chair of the Energy and Resources Group, an interdisciplinary graduate group, from 1998 to 2000; and as chair of Nuclear Engineering from 2000 to 2005 and from 2009 to 2012. Since 2002 he has co-chaired the Generation IV International Forum Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection Working Group. He is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society, is a Jason, and was appointed by the Obama Administration in February 2010 as a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. His specific research interests focus on topics in heat and mass transfer, fluid dynamics, and phase change. He has worked on problems in energy and environmental systems, including advanced reactors, inertial fusion, high-level nuclear waste processing, and nuclear materials management and security.

--Co-Hosted with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences--

Director Albright will give a CISAC science seminar as part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Workshop on Dual-Use Technologies within their Global Nuclear Future Initiative.

Penrose C. "Parney" Albright is the 11th Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the second president of Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS), LLC. Albright has extensive experience in executive leadership, including policy direction, strategic planning, congressional and executive branch interactions, financial and personnel management of large mission-focused science and technology organizations, and research, development, testing, and evaluation of national security technologies and systems. He has a broad and deep understanding of U.S. military and international security requirements, functions, and processes in the national security arena.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Stanford Law School.

About the Topic: For most of human history, a pitched battle was deemed a lawful way of settling an international dispute--a kind of trial, with a kind of verdict. Today the idea of settling disputes by deliberately staging battles sounds utterly lawless.  Yet the striking truth is that the battle warfare of the past was in important ways more civilized than the warfare of the present; and it is well worth asking whether we can still learn anything from the old forms of war.  Those forms were founded on a forgotten species of the law of war.  Modern law of war is humanitarian law, dedicated to preserving lives.  But our ancestors' law of war was law of victory, dedicated to answering two legal questions:  How do we know who won? What rights is the victor entitled to claim?  Those questions sound coldblooded today, but they laid the groundwork for a practice of limited warfare. 

About the Speaker: James Q. Whitman is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School and specializes in comparative law, criminal law, and legal history.  He is the author of several prizewinning books, including Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide Between America and Europe, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial, and The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War.  He has published several notable articles, "The Two Western Cultures of Privacy: Dignity versus Liberty" which was published in the 2004 volume of The Yale Law Journal.  Professor Whitman received a B.A. and a J.D. from Yale, an M.A. from Columbia, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.