Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2014
Volume 59, Number 5
Saturday–Tuesday, April 5–8, 2014; Savannah, Georgia
Session J17: Invited Session: Joseph A. Burton Forum Award and Leo Szilard Lectureship Award |
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Sponsoring Units: FPS Chair: Valerie Thomas, Georgia Institute of Technology Room: 105-106 |
Sunday, April 6, 2014 10:45AM - 11:21AM |
J17.00001: Joseph A. Burton Forum Award: Some Nuclear Weapons Dilemmas Invited Speaker: Michael May Nuclear weapons pose a combination of political and ethical dilemmas the solution to which has not been found. On one hand, in the view of both US government leaders and US allies, nuclear deterrence continues to play an essential part in the US role as the ultimate source of military strength for the alliances among the major democratic countries. It also continues to be in demand by countries that believe themselves to be isolated and threatened. On the other hand, nuclear weapons, besides being effective deterrents, can cause unprecedented loss of life and risk the demise of civilizations. No ban or technical precaution could prevent the rebuilding of nuclear weapons in a crisis. No diplomatic arrangement to date has erased the threat of invasion and war in the world. Only the abandonment of war and the threat of war as instruments of policy can make nuclear weapons obsolete. The slow, halting, risky road to that end remains the only hope for a world in which lasting solutions to the nuclear dilemmas are possible. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 6, 2014 11:21AM - 11:57AM |
J17.00002: Leo Szilard Lectureship Award: Fissile Materials: A Global Threat Invited Speaker: Ramamurti Rajaraman The world has built up a huge glut of Fissile Materials, posing a potentially devastating threat. While specialists in the field have been aware of this danger for a long time, it was only after President Obama organized the Nuclear Security Summit in 2010 that the attention of the world's political leadership was drawn to it. We will present here an introductory overview of Fissile materials-- their definition, significance and their production facilities and stocks in different parts of the world. We will also mention some of the efforts being made to verifiably cap and reduce their stocks as well as the technical and political complications involved in the process. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 6, 2014 11:57AM - 12:33PM |
J17.00003: Leo Szilard Lectureship Award: Arguing from the Periphery Invited Speaker: M.V. Ramana In today's societies, where the use of sophisticated and potentially dangerous technologies has become routine and where economic and political power require the constant invention and deployment of new technologies, meaningful democratization necessarily requires that people with expertise on these subjects intervene actively in the public interest, speaking truth to power as it were. There is a long history of such intervention by scientists, physicists in particular, in debates over nuclear policies in many countries around the world. This talk will explore different roles scientists have played in this contentious and disputed arena, with some recent examples from India. [Preview Abstract] |
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