Radiation detection technology might significantly enhance a nation state’s ability to detect and counter the threat of nuclear terrorism, but the technology is not a panacea for the nuclear terrorism problem. Because of limitations imposed by physics (and arguably even more serious and fundamental limits imposed by geometry), radiation detection systems may never be able to detect all nuclear threats in credible risk scenarios. Of course, it is highly unlikely that the problem of nuclear terrorism- like many societal problems we face today- has a simple technological solution, but technology can help. I will argue that the pursuit of an all technological solution has- paradoxically- limited the progress that has been made in developing effective systems for detecting nuclear threats. Using an investment metaphor: we in the US and most of the developed world have bet on “get rich quick” schemes with respect to radiation detection technologies and have eschewed a path of steady progress. I argue that the US- and others- should take a more straightforward  model to funding radiation detection research and development and develop simple metrics to measure steady progress as opposed to our current policy of betting all on “transformational solutions” that would “solve the problem”.

About the speaker: Jim Lund is a Senior Manager at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA. Prior to arriving at Sandia in 1994, he worked at Radiation Monitoring Devices in Massachusetts for 12 years where he was the manager of the Advanced Radiation Detector Group and led a group developing radiation detectors for advanced medical diagnostics and imaging.

After arriving at Sandia as a Consultant, Lund became a Senior Member of the Technical Staff and eventually a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff before becoming a Manager in 2003. He is currently a Senior Manager of Security Systems Engineering- a group of five engineering and science departments at Sandia, Livermore.

Lund has a B.S. in Chemistry and Math from Salem State University and an M.S. in Applied Physics from the University of Massachusetts. He has written and coauthored many publications in the field of ionizing radiation detection, refereed for several journals, evaluated proposals for DOE, NSF, and NIH, and has been invited to present to several national advisory groups (NAS, JASON, DSB, etc.).

More event information TBA. 

Speaker bio:

Rebecca Slayton is a lecturer in Stanford’s Public Policy Program and a junior faculty fellow at CISAC for 2013-2014. She was a visiting scholar at CISAC for 2012-2013. Her research examines how experts evaluate the prospects and risks of new technology, and how they make their judgments politically persuasive in the context of international security. She recently completed a book, Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012, which will be published by MIT Press in 2013. Arguments that Counts compares how two different ways of framing technology—physics and computer science—lead to very different understandings of the risks associated with weapons systems, and especially missile defense. It also shows how computer scientists established a disciplinary repertoire—quantitative rules, codified knowledge, and other tools for assessment—that enabled them to analyze the risks of missile defense, and to make those analyses “stick” in the political process. She has recently begun studying how different cultures of risk have shaped, and continue to shape, the field of cyber security.

Slayton was a lecturer in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Stanford University and a CISAC affiliate from 2005-2011. In 2004-2005 she was a CISAC science fellow. She earned a PhD in physical chemistry at Harvard University in 2002. From 2002-2004, she retooled in the social sciences as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also won a AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship in 2000, and has worked as a science journalist.

Speaker bio:

Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI. He is also an emeritus director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. Hecker currently is on sabbatical working on a book project and will return to Stanford in the summer of 2013 to resume his research and teaching.

Hecker's research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapons policy and international security, nuclear security (including nonproliferation and counter terrorism), and cooperative nuclear threat reduction. Over the past 18 years, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials.

His current interests include the challenges of nuclear India, Pakistan, North Korea, and the nuclear aspirations of Iran. Hecker works closely with the Russian Academy of Sciences and is actively involved with the U.S. National Academies.

Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

About the Topic: As the U.S. considers potential paths towards nuclear arms reductions, key considerations are asymmetry (the state of the US nuclear stockpile/deterrent and variations in international nuclear capabilities) and risk (degree of transparency/trust and ability to verify commitments). As stockpile numbers go down, each weapon takes on increased importance and stability of deterrence will be essential. Technically we can achieve reduced risk levels in our stockpile and the ability to verify compliance, if we plan and prepare. Increased transparency and dialogue could enable better understanding of the risks and help direct future negotiations in an environment of increased confidence. 

About the Speaker: Bruce Goodwin is the Associate Director at Large for National Security Policy and Research and the Director of the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). In this role, he is the principal military and civilian policy liaison at LLNL. From 2001 until 2013, he was the Lab’s Principal Associate Director for the nuclear weapons program. In that role he was responsible for leading the stockpile stewardship program, for developing strategies, for establishing priorities, and for the design and maintenance of LLNL’s nuclear explosives. He is one of the world’s leading theoretical experts in plutonium and implosion dynamics, and has won the Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence Awardfor his work.

About the Topic: Analysis of environmental samples collected for nuclear forensics purposes typically involves determination of isotopic composition, which can sometimes (but not always) reveal information about nuclear events or processes that resulted in the anthropogenic radioactivity. This information is referred to as the “isotopic signature”.  Sequential extractions have been used for many years to determine chemical forms of contaminants for environmental regulatory purposes and clean-up decisions, and they can reveal “chemical signatures” about the events or processes that resulted in contamination.  Coupling sequential extractions with isotopic determinations in nuclear forensics analyses provides an opportunity to link isotopic and chemical signatures, which can improve confidence in identifying the relevant nuclear event or process. This approach shows promise, particularly when coupled with nuclear fuel cycle process knowledge.  Examples involving contaminated nuclear sites in the US and Russia will be discussed.

About the Speaker: Sue B. Clark is the regents distinguished professor of chemistry with tenure at Washington State University. She also holds an appointment to the US Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, appointed in 2011 by President Barack Obama. Her current research areas include the environmental chemistry of plutonium and other actinides, chemistry of radioactive waste systems, and actinide separations. She has over 100 peer-reviewed publications in these areas. 

Her research support includes grants and contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science and National Nuclear Security Administration. Prof. Clark is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Chemical Society (ACS), and is the 2012 recipient of the ACS’s Olin-Garvan Medal. Prof. Clark is an editor for the journal Radiochimica Acta. Professor Clark holds a BS degree in Chemistry from Lander College (Greenwood, SC) and MS and PhD degrees in Chemistry from Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL). 

About the Topic: Air, sea, land, and space are the traditional domains of military operations. Now, as the Information Age unfolds, cyberspace has become the fifth domain. The relative newness of cyberspace and the interdependencies between it and the preexisting domains pose many challenges, both in terms of the wise integration of cyber into ongoing operations and the creation of personnel with the right combination of technical and non-technical knowledge to apply activities on computers and networks in ways consistent with high-level policy. Cyber operations include both the defense of networks and computers, but also actions to achieve specific effects on adversaries.  These effects may extend to the physical world, or may be circumscribed entirely to cyber systems. Through examples and observations, this unclassified talk will illustrate the complexity of our quest to use cyber space.

About the Speaker: Dr. Cynthia Irvine is the chair of the Cyber Academic Group and director of the Center for Information Systems Security Studies and Research (CISR) at the Naval Postgraduate School where she is a professor of computer science. Her research centers on the design and construction of secure high assurance systems and multilevel security, and now cyber systems and operations. She is an author on over 160 papers and reports and has supervised the research of over 140 Masters and PhD students. Dr. Irvine is a recipient of the Naval Information Assurance Award and the William Hugh Murray Founder’s Award from the Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education. She is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, a lifetime member of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and a Golden Core Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). From 2005 through 2009, she served as Vice- Chair and subsequently as Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Security and Privacy.