*STS Circle at Harvard* *[image: line.gif] * * * *Allison Macfarlane * *George Mason University* * * on
*A Free-For-All? Impacts of Emerging Nuclear Energy Countries* Monday, November 1st 12:15-2:00 p.m. 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106 [image: line.gif] Lunch is provided if you RSVP. Please RSVP to [email protected] by Thursday, October 28th. *Abstract: *Over 60 countries that do not have nuclear power have expressed interest in acquiring it. Some have even engaged the nuclear industry to begin construction of power plants, claiming that projections indicate a greatly increased energy demand over the next 20 years. Nuclear power offers a carbon-free way of addressing energy needs and carries prestige along with it. But nuclear power is a fundamentally ambiguous technology: it can be used for good - powering a nation - and bad - the development of nuclear weapons. (The latter, in fact, is the main worry about Iran right now.) It is this ambiguity that requires further investigation: how do the players in the spread of nuclear technology understand nuclear power? Are they simply trying to make money, trying to prevent a hedge for nuclear weapons, trying to increase their political power by importing this "modern" technology? I address these questions through an examination of the discourse around emerging nuclear energy countries to tease out the real issues underlying the surface discourse. *Biography: *Allison Macfarlane is currently an Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. She is also an affiliate of the Program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. She received her PhD in geology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. She has held fellowships at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University, and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. From 1998-2000 she was a Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Foundation fellow in International Peace and Security. She has served on National Academy of Sciences panels on nuclear energy and nuclear weapons issues. She is currently a member of the White House’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. She is also presently chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and serves on the Keystone Center’s Energy Board. Her research focuses on environmental policy and international security issues associated with nuclear energy, especially the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. In 2006 MIT Press published her book, Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste, which explores the unresolved technical issues for nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
_______________________________________________ Sci-tech-public mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/sci-tech-public
