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Abstract: What is the future of nuclear energy?

The answer to that question will be determined largely by how we answer another: How do we meet future energy needs while mitigating climate change?

If the goal is to decarbonize our power grid, manufacturing processes and transportation systems, while increasing the standard of living in the U.S. and providing power to the more than 1.3 billion people worldwide currently living without, nuclear energy must be part of a mix that includes renewables such as solar and wind.

The nuclear reactors of the future will be different, however, than those currently in operation in the U.S. and around the world.

Through private-public partnerships and cutting-edge research conducted at Idaho National Laboratory, the U.S. is working to develop reactors that are safer, smaller, cheaper to build and operate, and which produce less spent fuel.

But, questions remain:

Will the U.S. open a national repository for spent fuel and Cold War nuclear waste?

Can the public be convinced that nuclear energy’s disadvantages are outweighed by its contributions to the safety, reliability and stability of our power grid, as well as our economy, environment and national security?

Will policymakers continue to make the investments necessary to ensure that the commercial nuclear energy industry, an American creation that generates 19 percent of our electricity and more than half of our carbon-free electricity, continues to power U.S. prosperity well into the 21^st century?

Dr. Mark Peters will address these questions, talk about the technical evolution of reactor designs, and detail growing bipartisan support for nuclear energy in Washington, D.C.

He also will discuss the research and development history that helped create the American nuclear energy industry, and the role INL and other national laboratories will play in developing and deploying the next generation of nuclear reactors.

Bio: Dr. Mark Peters is laboratory director at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). He is responsible for management and integration of a large, multipurpose national laboratory, with a mission focus in nuclear energy, national and homeland security, and energy and environmental science and technology. He manages an organization of 4,200 staff and multiple nuclear and non-nuclear experimental facilities, with an annual budget of more than $1 billion. Peters serves as a senior advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy on nuclear energy technologies and research and development programs, and nuclear waste policy. As a recognized expert in nuclear fuel cycle technologies and nuclear waste management, Peters is called upon frequently to provide expert testimony to Congress in formulation of policies for nuclear fuel cycles, nonproliferation and nuclear waste disposal. Peters was honored in 2015 as a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society for outstanding accomplishments in the area of nuclear science and technology. Peters serves as chairman of the National Laboratory Directors Council Executive Committee.

Abstract: My research focuses on the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and on the release of radioactive contamination throughout Japan. Based on 14 months of fieldwork in Japan, the research examines the crisis of expertise that ensued when many citizens became wary of state institutional experts, especially in their capacities to explain and manage the problems engendered by residual radioactivity.In this context of public skepticism, I ask the following: how does the Japanese state attempt to govern the hazards of radioactive contamination, and ultimately, the reconstruction of normality in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster? I argue that the management of radiation hazard after Fukushima includes an important reorganization of state expertise, which now moves beyond traditional forms of risk communication and institutional experts.My research advances policyand public-relevant understandings of repliesto radioactive contamination by highlighting the needs of appropriate educational infrastructure around radiation risk, while emphasizing democratic opportunity for citizen-government collaboration. Within post-Fukushima Japan, anthropological investigations of the governance of radiation hazards are essential for understanding the configurations of cultural schemas, social relationships, and technological interplays that led individuals to “accept” life amidst toxicity and other to refuse it.

Speaker's Biography: Maxime Polleri is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at York University. His current research focuses on the 2011 Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear disaster and on the crisis of expertise that ensued, in which many citizens have become wary of state institutional experts, especially in their capacities to manage the problems engendered by residual radioactivity. In such a context, his dissertation is concerned with how the Fukushima crisis has participated in the formations of new forms of expertise and consequently, new means of governing toxicity. It asks: How is radioactive hazard being governed in the wake of a crisis of legitimacy against state institutional expert? Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork throughout Japan, the dissertation argues that averting the crisis of expertise and managing the reconstruction of what “normality” involves in a post-Fukushima Japan include a fundamental reorganization of state governance, where the dissemination of radiation hazards cannot simply rest on dry, clinical manner in which government-packaged expertise about radiation was initially promulgated to a former lay public. In particular, these shift in the governance of radioactive risk are increasingly being enacted by promoting a state-sponsored affective embodiment toward nuclear matter, as well as by encouraging the endeavor of citizen science, where former lay citizens now track and monitor residual radioactivity in their environment. His fieldwork was funded by the Japan Foundation and the Canada Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. His work has been published in Anthropology Now, Anthropology Today, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly Second Spear.

Abstract: The American Lab, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2018, tells the story of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (the Lab) from the events leading to its founding in 1952 through its transfer to private status in 2008 (after 66 years of sole University of California management). It highlights the important episodes in that journey beginning with the invention of Polaris, the first submarine launched ballistic missile, continuing through the Lab’s controversial role in the Star Wars program, and helping lead the development of the stockpile stewardship program after the cessation of nuclear testing. It describes the intense focus on-laboratory-scale thermonuclear fusion with early work in magnetic fusion to the world’s largest effort on laser fusion that ultimately resulted in the construction of the National Ignition Facility. It includes a number of smaller projects ranging from its participation in founding the Human Genome Project (and its subsequent effort in biodefense) to its array of activities on global climate and basic research. Throughout, the book emphasizes the national security environment in which the Lab existed and the increasing role of politics in “big science”.

Bio: C. Bruce Tarter is a theoretical physicist with a BS from MIT and a PhD from Cornell. He began as a researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1967 and eventually served as its Director from 1994-2002. Since that time as Director Emeritus he has served on a number of Boards and Task Forces including the National Academy study of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Speaker Bio: Sarah Kreps is an Associate Professor of Government and Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell University. In 2017-2018, she is an Adjunct Scholar at the Modern War Institute (West Point). She is also a Faculty Fellow in the Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity at the Cornell Tech Campus in New York City.

Dr. Kreps is the author of four books, including, most recently, Taxing Wars: The American Way of War Finance and the Decline of Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018), which deals with the causes and consequences of how advanced industrialized democracies such as the US, UK, and France pay for its wars.  She has also written two books on drones, including Drones: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Drone Warfare (Polity Press, 2014; with John Kaag).  Her first book was called Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions after the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2011) and analyzed military interventions carried out over the last decade.

Beyond these books, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, World Politics, Journal of Politics, International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Political Science Quarterly, International Studies Perspectives, Foreign Policy Analysis, Polity, African Security Review, the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, the International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, Intelligence and National Security, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Polity. Her opinions have been featured in a series of media outlets including The Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, CNBC,and Reuters.

Dr. Kreps has held fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations (and is a life member), Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Public Affairs. She has a BA from Harvard, MSc from Oxford, and PhD from Georgetown. Between 1999-2003, she served on active duty in the United States Air Force.

Abtstract: Although the 2016 election highlighted the potential for foreign governments to employ social media for strategic advantages, the particular mechanisms through which social media affect international politics remain underdeveloped.  Building on insights from American politics, in particular the “democratic dilemma,” I observe that many issues of foreign policy are complex and the public is insufficiently informed to offer well-reasoned opinions. To resolve the knowledge deficits and ambivalence, they seek information from their media environment, which is where social media—as platforms that are open access and amplify content that is extreme either in their positive or negative valence—can cue individuals and tilt the balance of support.  In this context, the open media environment of a democracy is a particularly susceptible environment for foreign influence whereas the comparatively closed media environment of a non-democracy provides efficient ways for these governments to censor, cut, or counter social media in ways that promote regime survival.  The research has important implications for the role of media, technology, and persuasion in international politics.