Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Global Famine after Nuclear War
2023-03-16
Colloquium Abstract
A nuclear war could inject so much smoke from the resulting fires into the stratosphere that the resulting climate change would be unprecedented in recorded human history. Our climate model simulations find that the smoke would absorb sunlight, making it dark, cold, and dry at Earth’s surface and produce global-scale ozone depletion, with enhanced ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface. The changes in temperature, precipitation, and sunlight from the climate model simulations, applied to crop models show that these perturbations would reduce global agricultural production of the major food crops for a decade. The direct effects on people of nuclear war would be horrific, with blast, fires, and radioactivity killing millions of people, but the indirect effects on the food supply could kill 15-20 times as many people. A war between India and Pakistan could kill 1 to 2 billion people from starvation, and a war between the U.S. and Russia could kill more than 5 billion people. My current research project, being conducted jointly with scientists from the University of Colorado, Columbia University, Louisiana State University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, is examining in detail, with city firestorm and global climate models, various possible scenarios of nuclear war and their impacts on agriculture and the world food supply. The greatest nuclear threat still comes from the United States and Russia. Even the reduced arsenals that remain in 2023 due to the New START Treaty threaten the world with nuclear winter. The world as we know it could end any day as a result of an accidental nuclear war between the United States and Russia. As a result of international negotiations pushed by civil society led by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), and referencing our work, the United Nations passed a Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons on July 7, 2017. On December 10, 2017, ICAN accepted the Nobel Peace Prize “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.” How soon will pressure from the 86 and counting nations who have ratified the nuclear ban treaty get the United States and the other eight nuclear nations to sign this treaty? The Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction is working to make that happen.
About the Speaker
Dr. Alan Robock is a distinguished professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, associate editor of the journal Reviews of Geophysics, a former Lead Author of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a former Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines, and has been researching the climatic and agricultural impacts of nuclear war for the past 40 years.

Ohio University - A Case Study in Nuclear Proliferation: The Iran Nuclear Deal and the Responsibility of Physicists
2023-03-10 | 25 South Green Drive, Athens, Ohio 45701, Water Hall 145
Colloquium Abstract
The first nuclear weapon was tested in Alamogordo, NM, in July 1945. In the following month, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed through the explosion of two nuclear warheads. These horrifying strikes directly led to the surrender of Japan almost 4 years after its attack on Pearl Harbor. An industrial scale effort with more than 130,000 employees produced the first nuclear fission weapons during 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. 75 years later, despite enormous international efforts to create an effective system of nuclear arms control agreements that seek to limit nuclear weapons technology to the initial nuclear powers, knowledge and technology have further proliferated. Today nine countries possess nuclear weapons.
Alarmingly important arms control treaties have been challenged also by leading nuclear weapon states: The United States and Russia have ended the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty. Failure in the negotiations for an extension of the New START treaty was avoided only at the last moment. The United States has withdrawn from the JCPOA (the Iran Nuclear Deal). Both the United States and Russia have withdrawn from the Open Skies Arms Control Treaty.
The colloquium will review possible 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 over the past 70 years. We will briefly review challenges different arms control agreements have been facing in the recent past. Some focus will be placed on the Iran Nuclear Deal, an agreement that aims to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to Iran. We will discuss the recent history, including the US withdrawal in 2018 and current efforts to re-negotiate the agreement.
About the Speaker
Professor Matthias Grosse Perdekamp is a nuclear physicist at the University of Illinois. He serves as head of the Department of Physics and as director of the UIUC Program for Arms Control and Domestic and International Security, ACDIS. He explores the physics of nuclear forces and the structure of the fundamental building blocks of nuclear matter through accelerator-based experiments at European Laboratory for Nuclear and Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. His laboratory is developing advanced instrumentation for the detection of ionizing radiation. He teaches a longstanding course on Nuclear War and Arms Control as part of the ACDIS security certificate for undergraduate students at UIUC.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - Global Famine After Nuclear War
2023-03-08 | National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California

Virtual Discussion Session: U.S.-Russian Nuclear Arms Control Diplomacy
2023-03-03 12:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York)
To provide more context on the U.S.-Russia arms control and effective advocacy for nuclear threat reduction, we held a special meeting on March 3, 2023 for members of the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction. This session included remarks by the panelists (recording below), followed by an open discussion between the Coalition’s experts and members.

Speakers:

Daryl G. Kimball (Executive Director, The Arms Control Association)
Tara Drozdenko (Director of Global Security Program, The Union of Concerned Scientists)
Frank A. von Hippel (Senior Research Physicists and Professor Emeritus, Princeton University)

Indiana University Bloomington - Restraining the New Nuclear Arms Race: What Scientists and Engineers Can Do to Preserve Nuclear Arms Control
2023-01-18
Colloquium Abstract
We live in an increasingly dangerous nuclear world marked by the abandonment of hard-won arms-control and nonproliferation agreements; the modernization at a cost of trillions of dollars of existing nuclear arsenals; the development of new types of strategic weapons; and threats to use nuclear weapons that risk escalation to large-scale nuclear war. This talk highlights some current and emerging nuclear weapon issues and discusses examples of policy analysis and research where contributions from scientists and engineers could be particularly valuable and timely in advancing efforts to mitigate nuclear weapon risks. The talk also outlines the goals and work by the new Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction, which seeks to inform and mobilize the physics community on nuclear arms control and to offer avenues for scientists to take action in the years ahead.
About the Speaker
Alex Glaser is an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs and in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. He is the co-director of Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security and serves on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board, which sets the hands of the Doomsday Clock. Foreign Policy named Glaser one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2014 for his work on nuclear warhead verification. Glaser holds a PhD in Physics from Darmstadt University and is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

New Developments in International Treaties on Nuclear Weapons: the NPT and the TPNW
2022-11-14 13:00 - 14:30
﻿
The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), also known as the Nuclear Ban Treaty, went into force in January 2021. The treaty was negotiated with the purpose of strengthening the largely unimplemented disarmament pillar of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The NPT has been signed by all but four nations. The Nuclear Ban Treaty has been signed by 91 nations and ratified by 68, none of which are nuclear weapon states. This August saw the completion of the tenth NPT review conference, a meeting held between the parties to the Treaty to review its progress. The conference exposed a rift between the nuclear weapon states and the non-nuclear weapon states on the lack of progress toward the NPT disarmament requirement. In this webinar, we will cover these recent developments, as well as the significance of, and the issue of compatibility between the NPT and TPNW.

Panelists

Zia Mian is a physicist and co-director of Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. He made presentations at the August 2022 NPT Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference and at the first meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in June.
Randy Rydell is a former Senior Political Affairs Officer for the UN’s High Representative for Disarmament Affairs and a staff member working on nonproliferation in the United States Senate. Since his retirement in 2014, he’s served as an Executive Advisor to Mayors for Peace, managed by the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation.
Ray Acheson has been providing analysis on arms control diplomacy at the United Nations and other international forums for over a decade as the head of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament program at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. They are currently a visiting researcher at Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security and a steering group member of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

The Nuclear Dimensions of the War in Ukraine
2022-03-28
Our March 28, 2022 briefing examined Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the connection to nuclear weapons. Speakers included Alex Glaser (Princeton University), Daryl Kimball (Arms Control Association), Pavel Podvig (United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research – UNIDIR) and Laura Grego (MIT).

President Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review
2021-12-03
Our December 3, 2021 briefing discussed the current status of the Biden Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and unpacked the biggest outstanding controversies and questions. Speakers included Jessica Sleight (Global Zero), Tom Collina (Ploughshares Fund), Laura Grego (MIT), and Charlotte Selton (APS).

Nuclear Arms Racing
2021-09-13
Our September 13, 2021 webinar discussed the dynamics of a nuclear arms race between the US, Russia, and China. Speakers include Steve Fetter (University of Maryland, College Park), Laura Grego (Union of Concerned Scientists), Lyle Goldstein (Naval War College), and Pavel Podvig (United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research – UNIDIR).

The Real World Effects of Nuclear Weapons
2021-07-13
Our July 13, 2021 webinar examines the effects of nuclear weapons, including the immediate and direct effects, the impact on climate and food, and how government war planners understand these effects. Speakers include Steve Fetter (University of Maryland, College Park), Matthew McKinzie (Natural Resources Defense Council), Alan Robock (Rutger University), and Lynn Eden (Stanford University).

Influencing Government Policy on Nuclear Weapons
2021-06-10
Our June 10, 2021 webinar discussed how government policy for nuclear weapons is formed, aspects of the current political landscape for nuclear arms control, and current Coalition advocacy on no-first-use. Speakers include Laura Grego (Union of Concerned Scientists), Sharon Weiner (American University), Stephen Young (Union of Concerned Scientists), Stewart Prager (Princeton University), and Charlotte Selton (APS)

Measures to Reduce the Nuclear Threat Under the Biden Administration
2021-01-29
Our January 29th, 2021 webinar covers a range of policy topics including no-first-use, launch-on-warning, ICBM modernization, and presidential sole authority. Speakers include Prof. Angela Di Fulvio (University of Illinois), Prof. Steve Fetter (University of Maryland), Dr. Laura Grego (Union of the Concerned Scientists), Prof. Zia Mian (Princeton University), Prof. Stewart Prager (Princeton University), and Prof. Frank von Hippel (Princeton University).

Nuclear Testing and New START: Nuclear Threat Reduction in 2020 and Beyond
2020-09-09
Our September 9, 2020 panel discussion provides background on current nuclear policy topics and updates on relevant legislation. Panelists Prof. Steve Fetter (University of Maryland) and Prof. Frank Von Hippel (Princeton University) provide briefings on nuclear weapons testing and New START while Dr. Laura Grego (Union of Concerned Scientists) moderates a spirited Q&A session. Also featuring Prof. Stewart Prager (Princeton University), Dr. Sébastien Philippe (Princeton University), and Charlotte Selton (APS)
