Nuclear Issues

Most of the global growth of nuclear power over the coming decade will occur in China. The safety and security policies guiding that growth are significant far beyond China, since an accident or act of terrorism would affect the use of nuclear energy around the world. In January, the Managing the Atom Project (MTA) held a workshop in Shenzhen, China, to discuss safety and security at China’s nuclear power and fuel cycle facilities.

The Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) has received a major grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to support a fellowship and training program aimed at helping prepare the next generation of nuclear policy leaders.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former director of intelligence and counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, argues that despite not falling victim to a major terrorist event in the last 10 years, the United States must not be complacent in its counter-terrorism efforts. Mowatt-Larssen said in a Belfer Center seminar in September that he believes the possibility of a major attack is higher in the next 10 years than in the preceding decade.

Russia, the United States, and other countries must cooperate to enable large-scale growth of nuclear energy around the world while achieving even higher standards of safety, security, and nonproliferation than are in place today. This will require building a new global framework for nuclear energy, including new or strengthened global institutions. The Belfer Center's Managing the Atom (MTA) Project and the Russian Research Center's Kurchatov Institute developed these and additional recommendations in a new collaborative report, published in October.

The Summer 2010 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights the Belfer Center's involvement with the Nuclear Security Summit, which was organized by Center alumni Gary Samore and Laura Holgate.

In mid-March, the Belfer Center's Managing the Atom (MTA) Project, together with Professor Li Bin of Tsinghua University, convened back-to-back workshops in Beijing on ways to strengthen U.S.-Chinese cooperation across a broad agenda of issues.

Belfer Center alumni Gary Samore and Laura Holgate played a key role in organizing President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit in April. Additionally, MatthewBunn's Securing the Bomb 2010 was released the day the Summit began, and Graham Allison provided attending leaders with materials that included a nuclear terrorism threat assessment and fact sheet.