Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction

Auburn University
2024-11-08
Speaker:
Dr. Stewart Prager
More information will be available closer to the event.

How to Avert the Coming Arms Race | University of Saskatchewan
2024-12-03 03:30 - 04:30 (America/New_York) | Virtual
Abstract
China, Russia, and the United States are ramping up their nuclear weapons capabilities in a replay of the Cold War. We survived the nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union largely by luck. The close calls of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the War Scare of 1983 frightened leaders in both countries, and led to landmark arms control and arms reduction agreements. Intervention by scientists and the public played a major role. Triggered by the U.S. withdrawal from the Nixon-era Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, Russia and China are deploying new weapons to circumvent U.S. ABM capabilities, while the U.S. is modernizing its land, sea, and air-based nuclear weapons. Here I describe four major elements of a possible initiative to turn around this situation and assure strategic stability, while reducing nuclear arsenals. 1) Limit Ballistic Missile Defenses, 2) Eliminate silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, 3) Ban sub-strategic nuclear arms in Europe, and 4) Ban nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles. This talk was sponsored by the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction, https://physicistscoalition.org/. We invite all scientists to join us.
About the Speaker
Robert J. Goldston is a Professor of Astrophysics at Princeton University. He received his B.A. in Physics from Harvard University, and his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Princeton University. He was director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), 1997 – 2009. He is Associated Faculty with the Program on Science and Global Security, and was acting director in Spring 2015. Goldston won the American Physical Society “Excellence in Plasma Physics” award in 1988 and chaired the American Physical Society Physics Policy Committee 2007–2009. He won the Fusion Power Associates Leadership Award in 2001, the Nuclear Fusion “Most Outstanding Paper” prize for 2012, and was named a “Leading Global Thinker” by Foreign Policy Magazine in 2014. He is a long-time U.S. representative on the ITER Science and Technology Advisory Committee. He serves on the board of the Council for a Livable World.
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University of Alberta | Oppenheimer and the Legacy of the Manhattan Project: Current Challenges in Nuclear Arms Control
2025-01-24 15:00 - 17:00 (Asia/Krasnoyarsk)
Abstract
Eighty years ago, Robert Oppenheimer led an industrial-scale effort with more than 130,000 employees
to create the nuclear fission weapons used to end World War II. With the United States and its allies facing
totalitarian aggressors in the European and Pacific theaters, many elite scientists, engineers and technicians
supported the Manhattan Project through their scientific and technological innovations.
Today, nine countries possess nuclear weapons. Nuclear non-proliferation diplomacy is increasingly difficult.
Important arms control treaties have been terminated: The Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty, the Iran
Nuclear Deal and the Open Skies Treaty. Most recently, Russia has paused its participation in the inspection
regime of the New START treaty.
The colloquium will review consequences of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism and explain the system of
arms control treaties that have been put into place to contain this threat. We will then review the challenges
different arms control agreements have been facing.
Speaker
Dr. Matthias Grosse Perdekamp
