Abstract: Continuing social concerns over nuclear energy technologies still limit the application of long-term solutions to nuclear waste management in most countries. These concerns result from a lack of public trust in the scientific basis used in the decision-making approach to waste disposal, particularly the siting of a geologic repository.  Also, nuclear waste issues have become intertwined with the discussion of the future of nuclear energy. Moreover, setting aside the technical uncertainties about the long-term behavior of the waste materials under extended geologic disposal conditions, a scientific dilemma exists about how to deal with the preferences of future generations that will have to safely manage the waste. This stalemate situation has motivated an effort to frame the discussion from a different and interdisciplinary perspective.

An innovative approach to nuclear waste management called ENTRUST is proposed. The approach consists of an analytical framework for the holistic assessment of nuclear waste management strategies and policies where the primary focus is on building and maintaining public trust. Based on a careful use of quantitative information for technical issues, ENTRUST seeks to support a participative and deliberative analysis of the policy and narratives on strategies for nuclear waste management and disposal.

Speaker Bio: François Diaz-Maurin is a Nuclear Security Visiting Scholar at CISAC (2017-2019) and a European Commission’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow (2017-2020).

François’ research at CISAC deals with the issue of the long-term management of nuclear waste produced at commercial power plants in a context of uncertain transitions and persisting social concerns over nuclear energy technologies. His interdisciplinary research seeks to merge quantitative and qualitative methods for the holistic study of nuclear waste management systems and policies.

In this talk, François will be presenting the preliminary results of his 3-year research project entitled “Building Trust in Nuclear Waste Management through Participatory Quantitative Story Telling (ENTRUST)”. The project will contribute to CISAC’s “Reset of U.S. Nuclear Waste Management Policy” science-policy initiative.

François received both B.S. (2004, with distinction) and M.S. (2007, with distinction) degrees in civil engineering from the University of Rennes 1, France, and a Ph.D. degree in environmental science and technology (2013, summa cum laude) from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Before joining academia, François spent four years as an engineer in the design of nuclear energy technologies in Paris, France (2007-2008) and in Boston, MA (2009-2010) for AREVA Inc. North America and AREVA Federal Services LLC.

Abstract: As a potential measure of mitigating the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to global warming, carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) entails capturing CO2 from from large industrial sources, compressing it to a dense supercritical form (scCO2), injecting it deep into suitable reservoirs, and storing it permanently. After 20+ years of research on CCS, including various applied studies involving pilot and demonstration projects, many stakeholders believe that the world is now ready to move from demonstration to industrial-scale implementation. Yet many hurdles remain, ranging from mostly technical nature to economic and public perception issues. This talk provides a broad overview of the decades of research on CO2 and discusses what has been learned versus what challenges remain. The presentation also elaborates on California as an interesting example for the complicated road to deployment at scale, as ambitious climate goals and generous carbon credits should provide for project economics to work, yet no California CCS project has materialized to date.

Speaker Bio: Jens Birkholzer is an internationally recognized expert in subsurface energy applications and environmental impact assessment. He is a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) in Berkeley, California, and currently serves as the Director for the Energy Geosciences Division (EGD) at LBNL. He received his Ph.D. in water resources, hydrology, and soil science from Aachen University of Technology in Germany in 1994. Jens joined LBNL in 1994, left for a management position in his native Germany in 1999, and eventually returned to LBNL in 2001. He has over 400 scientific publications, about 125 of which are in peer-reviewed journals, in addition to numerous research reports. He serves as the Associate Editor of the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control (IJGGC) and is also on the Board of Editorial Policy Advisors for the Journal of Geomechanics for Energy and Environment (GETE). Jens leads the international DECOVALEX Project as its Chairman, is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, and serves as a Senior Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology.

Abstract: Why do moderate majorities often fail to coordinate opposition to extremist minorities? This paper offers an explanation for the microfoundations of moderate mobilization in the face of extremist minorities using the case of Islamist extremism in Indonesia. In particular, I show that moderates and extremists face asymmetric costs in the decision to voice their true preferences resulting in a coordination dilemma for moderates, which I call the “Moderates’ Dilemma.” An original survey experiment and observational data of participant behavior during two additional surveys demonstrate that moderates hide anti-violent views for fear of reputation costs and that these effects vary by individuals’ sensitivity to reputation costs and degree of uncertainty of others’ attitudes. These findings suggest that over 16 million Indonesians may be hiding moderate preferences and have significant implications for countering violent extremism policies globally. 

Speaker Bio: Kerry Ann Carter Persen is a Carnegie Predoctoral Fellow at CISAC for the 2017-2018 academic year and a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the impact of violent extremism on political behavior in the Islamic World.

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly improving. The opportunities are tremendous, but so are the risks. Existing and soon-to-exist capabilities pose several plausible extreme governance challenges. These include massive labor displacement, extreme inequality, an oligopolistic global market structure, reinforced authoritarianism, shifts and volatility in national power, and strategic instability. Further, there is no apparent ceiling to AI capabilities, experts envision that superhuman capabilities in strategic domains will be achieved in the coming four decades, and radical surprise breakthroughs are possible. Such achievements would likely transform wealth, power, and world order, though global politics will in turn crucially shape how AI is developed and deployed. The consequences are plausibly of a magnitude and on a timescale to dwarf other global concerns, leaders of governments and firms are asking for policy guidance, and yet scholarly attention to the AI revolution remains negligible. Research is thus urgently needed on the AI governance problem: the problem of devising global norms, policies, and institutions to best ensure the beneficial development and use of advanced AI.

This problem can be broken into three complementary research clusters:

1. The technical landscape: What are the trends and possibilities in AI capabilities? What are their likely consequences? What are the externalities from AI, and how can they best be addressed?
2. AI politics: Who are the relevant actors, what are their interests, and what can they do? What is the nature of the conflict and cooperation challenges that they are likely to face? How can they overcome dangerous conflictual dynamics, in particular an international arms race?
3. AI governance: Given our understanding of the technical landscape and AI politics, what options are available to us for global governance of AI and what should we work towards?

Work on the AI governance problem must draw on the full body of social science and policy expertise. Solutions are needed by an unknown, but plausibly impending, deadline.

Speaker Bio: Allan Dafoe is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University and a Research Associate at the Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford. His research seeks to understand the causes of world peace and stability. Specifically, his research has examined the causes of the liberal peace, and the role of reputation and honor as motives for war. He develops methodological tools and approaches to enable more transparent, credible causal inference. Allan is beginning research on the international politics of transformative artificial intelligence.

Abstract: Mainland China has undergone a rapid development of nuclear power during the last two decades. The reactors under construction or soon to be constructed there include some of the world's most advanced models. While the average age of the workforce in China’s nuclear industry is still in the early 30s, China has already become largely self-sufficient in reactor design and construction, as well as other aspects of the fuel cycle. They have made full use of western technology while adapting and improving it, and now have set up a “go global” policy for exporting nuclear technology including heavy components to the rest of the world that may seem to be a strong competition to the US nuclear power industry. 

Speaker Bio: Dr. Lumin Wang came to US from China in 1982 and received his PhD in Materials Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988. He is a professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences and the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (UM). He worked at Argonne National Laboratory and University of New Mexico before joining UM in 1997. Professor Wang’s main research interests are on radiation tolerance of nuclear engineering materials and ion beam modification of materials. Professor Wang has published more than 400 SCI indexed research papers with an h-index above 50. Professor Wang has been serving on the International Committee of American Nuclear Society (ANS) since 2010. He has taken over 100 UM students to China to observe the development of nuclear power there seven summers in a row since 2010. Professor Wang was named as an outstanding nuclear engineering professor in 2008 and an international ambassador in 2013 by UM’s college of engineering. 

Abstract: Freshwater scarcity is expected to increase over the coming decades due to population growth, migration to urban centers in water-scarce regions, and climate change. Increased scarcity will in turn drive price increases and potential for conflict. The ability of a country to equitably deliver freshwater may thus be the difference between survival and peace or war. Past solutions have relied upon massive water projects that convey freshwater from water-rich to water-scarce regions, but such strategies are energy intensive, costly, and contentious when political boundaries are crossed. Seawater desalination can be even more energy intensive, and is constrained to near-ocean locations. By contrast, reuse of treated water creates local supplies that offset demand for imported water. In the developed world, such systems are typically add-ons to existing centralized treatment plants, and purified water is pumped from these facilities to local users. In the developing world, the costs of such systems are prohibitive, and a new approach is needed. What might be done with mass-produced modular systems equipped with accurate and rapid monitoring technology? What would be the obstacles and the pay-offs?

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.

Lunch will be served to pre-registered guests. To ensure an accurate headcount, RSVPs are required.

The winners of the 2017 Firestone Medal and the William J. Perry Prize will present their prize-winning theses at a lunchtime seminar.

The Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research recognizes the top 10% of all honors theses in social science, science, and engineering. Receiving the Firestone Medal this year is Lauren Newby for her work on "From Zero to Sixty: Explaining the Proliferation of Shi’a Militias in Iraq after 2003." 

The Perry Prize recognizes excellence in policy-relevant research in international security studies and was awarded to Alex Lubkin for his research on "Plutonium Management and Disposition in the United States: History and Analysis of the Program." 

Both recipients are members of the Center for International Security and Cooperation’s Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies.

Abstract: Over decades, assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and many others has bolstered understanding of the climate problem: unequivocal warming, pervasive impacts, and serious risks from continued high emissions of heat-trapping gases. Societies are increasingly responding with early actions to decarbonize energy systems and prepare for impacts. In this emerging era of climate solutions, new assessment opportunities arise. They include learning from ongoing real-world experiences and helping close the gap between aspirations and the pace of progress. Against this backdrop, I will consider core challenges in assessment, in particular: (1) integrating diverse evidence; (2) applying rigorous expert judgment; and (3) deeply embedding interactions between experts and decision-makers. Examples span climate risks and portfolios of mitigation and adaptation responses. For climate and broader global change, the presentation will explore how transparent, high-traction assessment can support decisions about contested and uncertain futures. 

About the Speaker: Katharine Mach is a Senior Research Scientist at Stanford University, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and a Visiting Investigator at the Carnegie Institution for Science. She leads the Stanford Environment Assessment Facility (SEAF). From 2010 until 2015, Mach co-directed the scientific activities of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which focuses on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. This work culminated in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report and its Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. Mach received her PhD from Stanford University and AB from Harvard College.