Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Nuclear power in the Middle East has appeared poised for dramatic growth for more than a decade.  Iran’s nuclear power plant at Bushehr, the first of its kind in the Middle East, began producing electricity in 2011. Tehran has plans or proposals for additional 11 reactors, according to the World Nuclear Association. Saudi Arabia has announced plans to build 16 nuclear power reactors by 2040. The UAE has four nuclear power reactors under construction, the first of which is expected to come online later this year.  Egypt, Turkey, and Jordan, are each pursuing the development nuclear energy at their own pace.  The appearance of activity is impressive. 

The Project on Managing the Atom offers fellowships for pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career researchers for one year, with a possibility for renewal, in the stimulating environment of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. The online application for 2016-2017 fellowships opened December 15, 2015, and the application deadline is January 15, 2016. Recommendation letters are due by February 1, 2016.

The ninth Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will be held at the UN Headquarters in New York from April 27-May 22, 2015. This is the fourth such conference since the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995. Participating governments will discuss nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy with a view to arriving at consensus on a number of issues.

Amidst intense negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 countries in Vienna on Iran's nuclear program, Professor Matthew Bunn was interviewed for a July 14 article in the Tehran Times about what a comprehensive agreement would look like and how the two sides of the dispute should approach the talks to obtain significant and substantive results.

On the eve of the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, a new study finds that an international initiative to secure all vulnerable nuclear stockpiles within four years has reduced the dangers posed by many of the world’s highest-risk nuclear stockpiles.  But the new analysis, by researchers with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, also concludes that much will remain to be done to ensure that all nuclear weapons and material are secure when the current four-year effort comes to an end.

In the Doomsday Clock issue of the Bulletin, the author takes a look at five events that unfolded in 2011 and that seem certain to cast a powerful shadow in months and years to come. No new breakthroughs occurred, the author writes, adding that 2012 could be a much more difficult year.

The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School has announced the 2010–2011 Nuclear Security Fellows. Karthika Sasikumar, Yun Zhou, and Mahsa Rouhi have been selected to spend a year in residence at the Belfer Center where they will conduct research under the auspices of the Center's International Security Program and Project on Managing the Atom.  Supported by a generous gift from the Stanton Foundation, the fellowships begin in September 2010.

"Our crystal ball is not clear enough to predict with confidence whether the global nuclear future will be characterized by peace and prosperity or by conflict and destruction. But we do believe that the choices made in the coming few years will be crucial in determining whether the world can have more nuclear power without more nuclear weapons dangers in the future."

"...[A] primary goal in the next decades must be to remove this risk of near global self-destruction by drastically reducing nuclear forces to a level where this outcome is not possible, but where a deterrent value is preserved — in other words, to a level of minimum deterrence. This conception was widely discussed in the early years of the nuclear era, but it drowned in the Cold War flood of weaponry. No matter how remote the risk of civilization collapse may seem now — despite its being so vivid only a few decades ago — the elimination of this risk, for this century and centuries to come, must be a primary driver for radical reductions in nuclear weapons."

Will the growth of nuclear power lead to increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism? Will the nonproliferation regime be adequate to ensure safety and security in a world more widely and heavily invested in nuclear power? The authors in this two-volume (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010) special issue of Dædalus have one simple and clear answer to these questions: It depends.