FSI researchers examine the role of energy sources from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) investigates how the production and consumption of energy affect human welfare and environmental quality. Professors assess natural gas and coal markets, as well as the smart energy grid and how to create effective climate policy in an imperfect world. This includes how state-owned enterprises – like oil companies – affect energy markets around the world. Regulatory barriers are examined for understanding obstacles to lowering carbon in energy services. Realistic cap and trade policies in California are studied, as is the creation of a giant coal market in China.
Whether it’s WikiLeaks and CIA documents or nuclear thieves, the danger from insiders in high-security organizations is escalating in our Internet age.
But many threats from within go unrecognized or misunderstood, according to Stanford professor Scott Sagan, who co-edited a new book Insider Threats with Matthew Bunn, a professor of practice at Harvard University. Their work analyzes the challenges that high-security organizations face in protecting themselves from employees who might betray them. Sagan, a core faculty member in Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Bunn recently participated in an online discussion of the book’s key arguments. They will hold a talk and book signing at 3:30 p.m. on May 16 in the CISAC Central Conference Room.
Sagan and Bunn wrote, “Perhaps the most striking lesson we learned in working with scholars and officials who have dealt with this problem was the sheer scale of the red flags – from explicit statements of support for Osama bin Laden to behavior leading other staff to fear for their lives – that organizations are able to ignore.”
They found that organizations tend to have biases that cause them to downplay insider threats. In particular, organizations with high-security needs face significant risks from trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials.
The researchers highlight "worst practices" from these past mistakes, suggesting lessons and insights that could improve the security situations at many workplaces. Amy Zegart, co-director of CISAC, has a chapter in Insider Threats that provides a detailed account of the organizational dysfunction that allowed Nidal Hasan to carry out his massacre at Fort Hood.
Other chapters include the following topics and authors:
An analysis of the similar problems that led Bruce Ivins, who probably carried out the anthrax attacks in 2001, to continue to have access to deadly pathogens (by Jessica Stern, then of Harvard and now at Boston University, and Ron Schouten, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School);
An analysis of the rapid rise and subsequent fall of “green-on-blue” attacks in Afghanistan – that is, Afghan soldiers and police officers attacking Americans there to help them (by Austin Long of Columbia University); and
An assessment of how casinos and pharmaceutical plants, with a profit incentive to protect against insiders, cope with the problem (by Bunn and Kathryn Glynn, then of IBM Global Business Services and now at the National Nuclear Security Administration).
Another chapter examines the potential terrorist use of nuclear insiders, offering new data that shows that jihadist writings and postings contain only a modest emphasis on possible nuclear plots, and essentially no mention of the possibility of using nuclear insiders. However, the authors warn this is no reason for complacency – insiders have been largely responsible for past nuclear theft incidents.
MEDIA CONTACTS
Scott Sagan, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-2715, ssagan@stanford.edu
Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu
My Journey at the Nuclear Brink is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from a nuclear catastrophe. Decades of experience and special access to top-secret knowledge of strategic nuclear options have given Perry a unique, and chilling, vantage point from which to conclude that nuclear weapons endanger our security rather than securing it. At this presentation to launch the Chinese translation of his book, Perry will talk about the future of nuclear competition in the face of US and Russia’s nuclear capability boost claims, North Korea’s nuclear development and the recent deployment of US and South Korea THAAD system against North Korea’s missile.
Rodney Ewing was elected to the National Academy of Engineering this week.
Ewing, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, was recognized for his research on “the long-term behavior of complex ceramic materials to assess their suitability for engineered nuclear waste sequestration.” He is a professor of geological sciences at Stanford.
Membership in the academy is one of the highest academic distinctions in the field of engineering. It honors outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to engineering literature” and “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education," according to the NAE.
The academy also honored two other Stanford professors: Andrea Goldsmith, professor of engineering, and Leonidas Guibas, professor of computer science. The three Stanford scholars among 84 new members joining NAE this year. In total, the academy has 2,281 members including 249 foreign members. The newly elected class will be formally inducted during a ceremony at the academy's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8, 2017.
Click here to read a Stanford News Service story on the selections of Ewing and his colleagues to the National Academy of Engineering.
On February 23, 1992, less than two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I landed on the tarmac in Sarov, a city the government had removed from maps to keep secret its status as a nuclear weapons center. I was then director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and accompanied by two senior scientists from my own lab plus three colleagues from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The six of us were about to walk through the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear bomb, the technological and intellectual powerhouse behind the sophisticated arsenal that had been pointed at our country for the previous 40 years.
Shockingly, after an hour-long flight from Moscow, we stepped out of the Aeroflot turboprop into the open arms of our Russian hosts: Yuli Borisovich Khariton, the scientific leader of the Soviet nuclear program, and other senior lab staff who had waited in the chilly wind to welcome us. Just as remarkable was the fact that this wasn’t the first time we met our Russian counterparts. Two weeks earlier, directors of the Russian nuclear weapons labs, VNIIEF in Sarov and VNIITF in Snezhinsk, had for the first time in history set foot in our labs in Livermore and Los Alamos. This exchange of visits a quarter century ago marked a new turn in relations between the world’s two nuclear weapons superpowers.
The road to Sarov
Our first meeting on Russian soil would have been deemed improbable just a few months earlier. The encounter on the Sarov tarmac grew out of both persistence by determined individuals and larger historical forces. As the Soviet Union scrambled to adjust domestic and international policy in the face of mounting economic and social challenges in the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev reached across the political divide to US President Ronald Reagan to take steps toward nuclear disarmament. One such step was the Joint Verification Experiment of 1988, in which the Soviet Union and the United States asked their nuclear weapons scientists to conduct parallel nuclear-explosion yield measurements at testing grounds in Nevada and Semipalatinsk, located in what is now Kazakhstan. The experiment helped overcome a stumbling block related to verification procedures needed to ratify the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT). The 1988 nuclear tests enabled the two sides to sign a new ratification protocol in Geneva in June 1990, and the TTBT entered into force in December 1990.
As history would have it, an unintended outcome of the TTBT ratification effort proved to be the most momentous. Viktor Mikhailov, head of the Soviet team that took part in the Joint Verification Experiment and later Russian minister of atomic energy, was right when he said that “the main result of the Joint Verification Experiment was not the development of procedures and extent of nuclear test monitoring of the joint development of technical verification means, but the chance for interpersonal communications with the American nuclear physicists.”
Indeed, it was working side by side at each other’s test sites that gave rise to deep-rooted affinity and built trust. Over the years, we had only caught glimpses of our Soviet nuclear scientist counterparts at a few international conferences where they disguised their institutional affiliations, saying they were part of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. It was through months of collaboration at our test sites that the contours of their true home institutions—the nuclear weapons labs VNIIEF and VNIITF—began to emerge. As we would discover eventually, these Soviet labs were remarkably similar to our own. We realized that in addition to nuclear weapons work, they were conducting outstanding fundamental science. We became consumed with curiosity to learn more about it first-hand. The Russians were curious about our work as well.
We were all interested in cooperation, but the Russians even more so because they sensed before we did just how dramatically the Soviet Union was changing. Lev D. Ryabev, who headed the atomic ministry at the time, told me years later that Russian nuclear weapons scientists were so eager to work with their American counterparts because “we arrived in the nuclear century all in one boat—movement by any one will affect everyone. We were doomed to work together.”
It was during a 1990 trip to Moscow by Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore lab scientists for technical discussions supporting the Geneva test ban talks that Mikhailov extended an impromptu invitation to visit the USSR’s secret nuclear city Sarov (then called Arzamas-16) for the first time.
The American scientists returned with specific proposals from the VNIIEF director and his senior scientists for collaboration with the US labs, along with an invitation to Lawrence Livermore Director John Nuckolls and me to visit the secret Russian cities.
Convinced by my Los Alamos colleagues that this was a great opportunity to collaborate scientifically in important areas of research, I tried a number of avenues in Washington to get approval for exploring potential cooperation. I got little traction until the second half of 1991, after the Soviet Union had begun to disintegrate. As it did so, President George H.W. Bush became concerned that brain drain from the Soviet nuclear complex could lead to the spread of knowledge about how to build these weapons of mass destruction.
Driven by that concern, US Energy Secretary James D. Watkins approved my request for the laboratory directors’ exchange visits, and two months after Gorbachev’s formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, we entered the surreal world of the Soviet Los Alamos.
A tradition worth sustaining
Our visits to Sarov and Snezhinsk shattered our Cold War preconceptions of the Soviet nuclear program. We were particularly impressed by the depth of scientific talent. Although they lacked modern computers and electronics, their computational achievements were remarkable, and their experimental facilities were innovative and functional. We found the scientists’ dedication to their mission deeply patriotic, and their attention to nuclear weapons safety reassuring. During our briefings and tours, Russian scientists described leading-edge research in the fundamental science that underpinned their nuclear weapons program. The visits convinced me that our US nuclear labs should collaborate with their Russian counterparts, not only to help solve immediate problems like proliferation and loose nukes, but also because in doing so we would benefit scientifically.
Our Russian colleagues were prepared with proposals for cooperation in a surprisingly broad range of areas. During a daylong session in Chief Weapon Designer Boris Litvinov’s office in Snezhinsk, watched by portraits of Lenin and Igor Kurchatov, one of the fathers of the Soviet Bomb, we hammered out a protocol for cooperation that we would take back to our governments. We came up with a long list problems we wanted to work on together. It included enhancing the security and safety of nuclear weapons during reduction and dismantlement; preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons knowledge; promoting the conversion and diversification of nuclear facilities; preventing non-nuclear states and terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons; developing joint mechanisms for emergency response; enhancing the safety of nuclear arsenals; preventing unauthorized use of remaining weapons; and promoting protection and cleanup of the environment at nuclear weapons facilities.
It turned out that we scientists were far ahead of what the US government was prepared to authorize at the time. We heard that when members of the National Security Council staff, which coordinated interagency government issues with Russia, received a copy of the protocol, they declared it did not exist and threw it in the waste paper basket. However, Nuckolls and I presented the protocol to Watkins and received approval to proceed, though only in fundamental science cooperation.
By May 1992, even though the US Energy and State Departments had only agreed to general principles, the former had provided us with the necessary financial support and the latter with the required permissions for travel to Russia. Just as importantly, we had defined what we wanted to do first in the collaboration we called lab-to-lab. We planned for joint experiments in high-energy-density physics and conferences on computer modeling and simulation.
In spite of the initial US government concerns, we would eventually end up cooperating in almost all the areas outlined in the initial protocol. A spirit of collaboration prevailed for nearly a quarter century, and was essential to successfully mitigating the dangers resulting from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, that cooperation has all but come to an end during the past few years as relations between Moscow and Washington have soured. But the benefits of future cooperation are potentially enormous, as a new report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative makes clear. The US and Russian governments, as well as the two countries’ scientists, should seize any opportunities that arise to rekindle nuclear cooperation.
Each year up to 100 high-achieving students with demonstrated intellect, leadership potential and civic commitment will receive full funding to pursue a graduate education at Stanford. Join us to learn more about the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program.
In a shack that now sits below sea level, a mother in Bangladesh struggles to grow vegetables in soil inundated by salt water. In Malawi, a toddler joins thousands of other children perishing from drought-induced malnutrition. And in China, more than one million people died from air pollution in 2012 alone.
Around the world, climate change is already having an effect on human health.
In a recent paper, Katherine Burke and Michele Barry from the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, along with former Wellesley College President Diana Walsh, described climate change as “the ultimate global health crisis.” They offered recommendations to the new United States president to address the urgently arising health risks associated with climate change.
Bangladeshi children make their way through flood waters.
The authors, along with Stanford researchers Marshall Burke, Eran Bendavid and Amy Pickering who also study climate change, are concerned by how little has been done to mitigate its effects on health.
There is still time to ease — though not eliminate — the worst effects on health, but as the average global temperature continues to creep upward, time appears to be running short.
“I think we are at a critical point right now in terms of mitigating the effects of climate change on health,” said Amy Pickering, a research engineer at the Woods Institute for the Environment. “And I don’t think that’s a priority of the new administration at all.”
Health effects of climate change
Even in countries like the United States that are well-equipped to adapt to climate change, health impacts will be significant.
“Extremes of temperature have a very observable direct effect,” said Eran Bendavid, an assistant professor of medicine and Stanford Health Policy core faculty member.
“We see mortality rates increase when temperatures are very low, and especially when they are very high.”
Bendavid also has seen air pollutants cause respiratory problems in people from Beijing to Los Angeles to villages in Sub-Saharan Africa.
“Hotter temperatures make it such that particulate matter and dust and pollutants stick around longer,” he said.
In addition to respiratory issues, air pollution can have long-term cognitive effects. A study in Chile found that children who are exposed to high amounts of air pollution in utero score lower on math tests by the fourth grade.
“I think we’re only starting to understand the true costs of dirty air,” said Marshall Burke. “Even short-term exposure to low levels can have life-long effects.”
Low-income countries like Bangladesh already suffer widespread, direct health effects from rising sea levels. Salt water flooding has crept through homes and crops, threatening food sources and drinking water for millions of people.
“I think that flooding is one of the most pressing issues in low-income and densely populated countries,” said Pickering. “There’s no infrastructure there to handle it.”
Standing water left over from flooding is also a breeding ground for diseases like cholera, diarrhea and mosquito-borne illnesses, all of which are likely to become more prevalent as the planet warms.
On the flip side, many regions of Sub-Saharan Africa — where clean water is already hard to access — are likely to experience severe droughts. The United Nations warned last year that more than 36 million people across southern and eastern Africa face hunger due to drought and record-high temperatures.
Residents may have to walk farther to find water, and local sources could become contaminated more easily. Pickering fears that losing access to nearby, clean water will make maintaining proper hygiene and growing nutritious foods a challenge.
Climate change will affect health in all sectors of society.
All of these effects and more can also damage mental health, said Katherine Burke and her colleagues in their paper. The aftermath of extreme weather events and the hardships of living in long-term drought or flood can cause anxiety, depression, grief and trauma.
Climate change will affect health in every sector of society, but as Katherine Burke and her colleagues said, “….climate disruption is inflicting the greatest suffering on those least responsible for causing it, least equipped to adapt, least able to resist the powerful forces of the status quo.
“If we fail to act now,” they said, “the survival of our species may hang in the balance.”
What can the new administration do to ease health effects?
If the Paris Agreement’s emissions standards are met, scientists predict that the world’s temperature will increase about 2.7 degrees Celsius – still significant but less hazardous than the 4-degree increase projected from current emissions.
The United States plays a critical role in the Paris Agreement. Apart from the significance of cutting its own emissions, failing to live up to its end of the bargain — as the Trump administration has suggested — could have a significant impact on the morale of the other countries involved.
“The reason that Paris is going to work is because we’re in this together,” said Marshall Burke. “If you don’t meet your target, you’re going to be publicly shamed.”
The Trump administration has also discussed repealing the Clean Power Plan, Obama-era legislation to decrease the use of coal, which has been shown to contribute to respiratory disease.
“Withdrawing from either of those will likely have negative short- and long-run health impacts, both in the U.S. and abroad,” said Marshall Burke.
Scott Pruitt, who was confirmed today as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is expected to carry out Trump’s promise to dismantle environment regulations.
Despite the Trump administration’s apparent doubts about climate change, a few prominent Republicans do support addressing its effects.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobile, supports a carbon tax, which would create a financial incentive to turn to renewable energy sources. He also has expressed support for the Paris Agreement. It is possible that as secretary of state, Tillerson could help maintain U.S. obligations from the Paris Agreement, though it is far from certain whether he would choose to do so or how Trump would react.
More promising is a recent proposal from the Climate Leadership Council. Authored by eight leading Republicans — including two former secretaries of state, two former secretaries of the treasury and Rob Walton, Walmart’s former chairman of the board — the plan seeks to reduce emissions considerably through a carbon dividends plan.
Already an issue, malnutrition will increase with droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Their proposal would gradually increase taxes on carbon emissions but would return the proceeds directly to the American people. Americans would receive a regular check with their portion of the proceeds, similar to receiving a social security check. According to the authors, 70 percent of Americans would come out ahead financially, keeping the tax from being a burden on low- and middle-income Americans while still incentivizing lower emissions.
“A tax on carbon is exactly what we need to provide the right incentives and induce the sort of technological and infrastructure change needed to reduce long-term emissions,” said Marshall Burke.
Pickering added, “This policy is a ray of hope for meaningful action on climate.”
It remains to be seen whether the new administration and congress would consider such a program.
What can academics do to help?
Meanwhile, academics can promote health by researching the effects of climate change and finding ways to adapt to them.
“I think it’s fascinating that there’s just so little data right now on how climate change is going to impact health,” said Pickering.
Studying the effects of warming on the world challenges traditional methods of research.
“You can’t create any sort of experiment,” said Bendavid. “There’s only one climate and one planet.”
The scholars agree that interdisciplinary study is a critical part of adapting to climate change and that more research is needed.
“If ever there was an issue worthy of a leader’s best effort, this is the moment, this is the issue,” said Katherine Burke and her colleagues. “Time is short, but it may not be too late to make all the difference.”
The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), in pursuit of training the next generation of scholars on contemporary Asia, has selected two postdoctoral fellows for the 2017-18 academic year. The fellows will begin their year of academic study and research at Stanford this fall.
Shorenstein APARC has for more than a decade sponsored numerous junior scholars who come to the university to work closely with Stanford faculty, develop their dissertations for publication, participate in workshops and seminars, and present their research to the broader community.
The 2017-18 cohort includes two Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellows; they carry a broad range of interests from labor migration policy in China to regional institutions in East Asia. Their bios and research plans are listed below:
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H. Seung Cho is completing his doctorate at Columbia University’s Department of Political Science. He researches U.S. and Chinese foreign policy toward East Asia’s regional institutions with a broader interest in U.S.-China relations, the political economy of East Asia and qualitative research methods. His dissertation probes the popular narrative that United States and China are competing over East Asia’s regional architecture, arguing that mutual misperception and security dilemma dynamics also play out in the politics of regional institution building. To explore this phenomenon, Seung has conducted extensive fieldwork in Beijing, Jakarta, Seoul and Washington, D.C. At Shorenstein APARC, Seung will be developing his dissertation into a book manuscript while looking to further examine the relationship between the politics of East Asia’s multilateral security institutions and their perceived lack of effectiveness. Previously, Seung was a predoctoral fellow at Peking University’s School of International Studies from 2014-16. Prior to starting his doctoral studies, he also served in South Korean military intelligence as part of the two-year national service. Seung holds a Bachelor of Science in government and economics and Master of Science in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
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Samantha Vortherms is a doctoral candidate in the University of Wisconsin – Madison Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on comparative political economy, development, social welfare and research methodology. Her dissertation examines subnational variation in access to citizenship rights in China through the household registration system. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education through the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad and the Social Science Research Council's Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, among others. At Shorenstein APARC, Sam will work on converting her dissertation to a book manuscript and advance her post-dissertation project on the role of the firm in labor migration policies. Before going to Wisconsin, Sam received her Master of Arts in international relations at the University of Chicago, Artium Magister in public policy from University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Richmond. From 2014-16, she was a visiting research fellow at the National School of Development's China Center for Health Economics Research at Peking University.
Stanford University has expressed its views on the recent executive order on immigration, and is offering resources for students who could be affected. News accounts indicate that as many as 17,000 students across the country fall into this category. On Jan. 27, President Trump signed an executive order restricting travel to the United States of people from seven largely Muslim countries -- Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Amy Zegart, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, said CISAC's "mission is generating knowledge to build a safer world. We bring scholars, ideas from everywhere. And always will."
Looking ahead, Stanford is planning campus events and initiatives on this issue. Some information already to note:
• Stanford launched a new website on immigration issues for students and scholars. This includes centralized campus information about international travel guidance and other information. Stanford will continue to add content to this site.
• A letter to the campus community from Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, provost John Etchemendy, and incoming provost Persis Drell affirming the university's support for international students. "As events unfold, the university intends to continue vigorously advocating before Congress, the Executive Branch, and beyond for policies consistent with its commitment to members of our community who are international, undocumented and those who are impacted by the recent executive order."
• A letter to the White House by Tessier-Lavigne and 47 other higher education leaders describing the impact the travel ban will have on students and scholars from those seven countries. "We write as presidents of leading American colleges and universities to urge you to rectify or rescind the recent executive order closing our country’s borders to immigrants and others from seven majority-Muslim countries and to refugees from throughout the world. If left in place, the order threatens both American higher education and the defining principles of our country."
• The Bechtel International Center remains an ongoing resource for international students and scholars at Stanford who have questions or concerns. Vaden Health Center’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) is collaborating with the Bechtel International Center and with the Markaz Resource Center. They will offer special drop-in hours for the next six Friday afternoons for students and scholars. Both student and scholar advisors will be present to offer guidance. Here is the schuedule:
Location: Bechtel International Center
Time: 2-4 p.m.
When: Feb. 10, in the Assembly Room; Feb. 17, in the Assembly Room; Feb. 24, in the Conference Room; March 3, in the Conference Room; March 10, in the Assembly Room; and March 17, in the Assembly Room.
• A statement by Stanford regarding its principles of immigration. "As an academic institution and as a community, Stanford welcomes and embraces students and scholars from around the world who contribute immeasurably to our mission of education and discovery."
• A Q&A with Stanford law professors Jayashri Srikantiah and Shirin Sinnar discussing the implications of the travel ban.
Russia’s desire to be a great power, nuclear deterrence and naval strategies are the reasons behind its rapid Arctic military build-up, a Stanford expert says.
The issue is complicated. “There are three basic drivers: military-strategic calculations, economic development, and domestic objectives,” said Katarzyna Zysk, a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
Zysk has a forthcoming paper on this topic to be published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. Last year, she presented her findings at the conference, "The Russian Military in Contemporary Perspective," held by the American Foreign Policy Council. She also discussed her research at the Hoover Institution's Arctic Security Initiative meeting in November 2016.
Putin’s foreign policy
Despite claims it would not do so, Russia since 2012 in particular has embarked on a large-scale military modernization in the Arctic across basically all defense branches, with a special focus on the air and maritime domain, Zysk said.
“The military ambitions have expanded with the more nationalist and isolationist turn in Russian policies after (Vladimir) Putin’s return as president in May 2012,” said Zysk, an associate professor at the Norwegian Defence University College who specializes in Russia’s security and defense policies.
In 2014, Russia decided to deploy military forces along the entire Russian Arctic coast, from Murmansk to Chukotka, and on permanent basis. A modernization effort is underway, too.
This trend has deepened the asymmetry of power between Russia’s forces and those of other countries in the region, such as the United States, Zysk said.
“The Arctic contributes to maintaining Russia’s great power status, which has been one of the main driving forces behind Putin’s foreign policy in recent years,” she said.
‘Startling’ military build-up
The Arctic appears as one of the most stable Russian border regions, which makes the rapid defense build-up by a Russian government with a slowing economy quite perplexing to many observers, noted Zysk.
Apart from the economy, she explains the military strategies involved:
“Russia has revived the Cold War ‘Bastion’ concept in the Barents Sea: In case of conflict, the Northern Fleet’s task is to form maritime areas closed to penetration for enemy naval forces, where Russia would deploy strategic submarines and maintain control. In the areas further south, Russia would seek to deny control for potential adversaries. It also gives Russia a possibility to attack an enemy’s sea lines of communication,” she said.
On top of this, Russia’s modernization efforts are focused on modernizing its nuclear deterrent, including building fourth-generation strategic submarines of the Borei class: three are completed, and five are under different stages of construction, according to Zysk.
Russia is also building new attack submarines, as well as new frigates and corvettes, though the shipbuilding industry is struggling with delivering these on time, she added.
Also, the Artic provides Russia a strategic gateway to both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Zysk said, which is important given that Russia’s naval forces are separated between four theaters of operations – the Pacific, the Arctic-Atlantic, the Baltic and the Black Sea.
As a result of climate change, Russia may be able to more freely move its warships between its main bases along the Northern Sea Route, she added.
“Importantly, the forces in the Arctic are not going to stay only in the Arctic. With the increased mobility, the military units can be transferred rapidly to support Russia military operations in other regions, as we have observed in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has used a brigade deployed in the High North. The trend is likely to continue, also because Russia’s military capabilities remain limited, despite the ongoing modernization,” she said.
Perceived threats
Russia considers that if it engaged in conflict with other great powers, such as the United States, the Arctic would be a major target, Zysk said. Russia has also rehearsed scenarios when the biggest part of the Russian Navy based in the Arctic, the Northern Fleet, would be activated during conflicts escalating in other regions. That’s a reason for the strengthening of its defenses in the region.
“In the Russian assessment, an aerial attack from the Arctic region may pose military threats to the entire Russian territory. In particular, however, Russia is concerned about the sea-based nuclear deterrent deployed in the Arctic. As a result, Russia has devoted a strong focus to increasing air defense and air control across the Arctic,” she said.
Apart from threats from state actors, environmental accidents, trafficking, terrorist attacks on industrial infrastructure or increased foreign intelligence also make the Arctic, in Russia’s view, a vulnerable territory. Finally, the issue of Russia’s vast energy reserves and other rich natural resources in the Arctic are another factor. The development of the Arctic is seen as one of the solutions to what ails the Russian economy.
Zysk said, “Since the early 2000s, the Russian political and military leadership has systematically argued that there will be an acute shortage of energy resources worldwide, which may lead to a conflict, and that the West, led by the United States, may attempt to seize Russia’s oil and gas.”
While this assessment is controversial, Zysk points to statements by the top Russian political and military leadership, including Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, that suggests the Russian leadership believes such scenario may occur by 2030.
“It may also explain some of the military investments in the region, such as reactivating 13 military airfields across the Arctic, paratroopers’ exercises and amphibious landing operations along the Northern Sea Route,” she said.
In addition, the Arctic holds a symbolically important place in Russia’s history and national identity, according to Zysk.
“Displays of military strength, accompanied by rhetoric that portrays Russia as the Arctic superpower, resonate well with the Russian public, especially in communities where feelings of nationalism and isolationism run deep,” she said.
As a result of the military modernization, she added, Russia is today better prepared to participate in complex military operations than a decade ago, especially in joint operations, strategic mobility and rapid deployments.
“Russia’s ability to limit or deny access and control various parts of the Arctic has increased accordingly,” Zysk said.
Abstract: Since their conception in the 1950s, thorium reactors have been promoted as a promising technology for nuclear energy generation, though they have not yet been successfully commercialized. Proponents of thorium reactors argue that they are safer, produce less waste, and are proliferation-resistant, compared with uranium-fueled light water reactors used around the world today. The central question guiding this research concerns the final claim. Is the thorium fuel cycle inherently more resistant to nuclear weapons proliferation than the traditional uranium fuel cycle?
Advocates argue that the thorium fuel cycle is less vulnerable to proliferation of nuclear weapons technology because little or no plutonium is produced. Additionally, fissile U-233 is claimed to be “self-protected” by U-232, which is produced with U-233 and decays through Tl-208, emitting highly energetic gamma radiation. But the amount of U-232 generated depends on reactor operation. Furthermore, the U-232 content can be further decreased by conducting chemical separations at the back-end of the fuel cycle.
This presentation will discuss the proliferation risks of the thorium fuel cycle. The potential for generating large stockpiles of isotopically pure U-233 by conducting protactinium separations at the back end of the fuel cycle is examined as a new proliferation pathway that current IAEA safeguards may not be prepared to address.
About the Speaker: Eva C. Uribe is a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC for the 2016-2017 academic year. Her research involves identifying proliferation pathways in the thorium fuel cycle and assessing the potential impact and implications of U-233 stockpile generation on the international nonproliferation regime. Eva received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2016. Her dissertation research focused on structural analysis of organically-modified porous silica surfaces for the extraction of uranium from aqueous solutions using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In 2011 Eva received a B.S. from Yale University with a double major in Chemistry and Political Science. She served as a Next Generation Safeguards Initiative intern with the Nonproliferation Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2008 and 2009.
Eva C. Uribe is a senior member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA. As a systems research analyst, Eva works with interdisciplinary teams to conduct systematic, data driven analyses to inform researchers and policymakers in the national security arena. Eva was a 2016-2017 Stanton Nuclear Security postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, where she investigated fissile material production pathways in the thorium fuel cycle. Eva received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2016. For her dissertation research, she conducted structural analyses of organically-modified porous silica surfaces for the extraction of aqueous actinides using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In 2011 Eva received a B.S. from Yale University with a double major in chemistry and political science. Her interests in nuclear science, technology, and policy began during her time as a Next Generation Safeguards Initiative intern with the Nonproliferation Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2008 and 2009.
FSI researchers examine the role of energy sources from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) investigates how the production and consumption of energy affect human welfare and environmental quality. Professors assess 
Bangladeshi children make their way through flood waters.
Climate change will affect health in all sectors of society.
Already an issue, malnutrition will increase with droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa.
