[Sci-tech-public] STS Circle, November 1st - Allison Macfarlane - (please RSVP)

[Harvard STS]

*STS Circle at Harvard*
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*Allison Macfarlane
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*George Mason University*
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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

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Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts at hks.harvard.edu 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/
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