Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2017
Volume 62, Number 1
Saturday–Tuesday, January 28–31, 2017; Washington, DC
Session M7: The Social Legacy of the Manhattan ProjectInvited Undergraduate
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Sponsoring Units: FPS FHP DNP Chair: Allen Sessoms, Georgetown University Room: Delaware A |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 3:30PM - 4:06PM |
M7.00001: Legacies of the Manhattan Project Invited Speaker: Daniel Kevles The Manhattan Project of World War II mobilized thousands of people, including many of the nation's leading physicists, and extensive material resources to design, develop, and manufacture the world's first nuclear weapons. It also established sprawling new facilities for the production of fissionable fuels -- notably at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington. It left a set of powerful legacies in the context of the Cold War -- endowing scientists with conscience-taxing responsibilities in the nuclear arms race; promoting enormous patronage of academic research by defense and defense-related federal agencies, notably the Office of Naval Research and the Atomic Energy Commission; and turning its wartime facilities into major national laboratories that advanced the fields of high-energy and nuclear physics and stimulated local industrial economies but that in some cases, notably at Hanford, severely polluted the surrounding environment with radioactive waste and disrupted the livelihoods of native peoples. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 4:06PM - 4:42PM |
M7.00002: The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in Context Invited Speaker: Kelsey Davenport The 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is the cornerstone of multilateral efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and promote efforts toward complete disarmament. In the grand bargain of the NPT, states foreswore pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for access to nuclear technology and limited nuclear arsenals to the five states (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) that tested such weapons before the NPT's conception. Now in its seventh decade, the NPT regime is embraced by the vast majority of the world's nations and is viewed as a critical element of international security. However, despite past successes in halting efforts in several states to pursue nuclear weapons, near universal adherence, and only one withdrawal (North Korea), the NPT regime is at a critical crossroads. The treaty has proven unable to adapt to new challenges, such as emerging technologies that threaten operational strategic realities, the devolution of state authority to non-state actors and institutions, and growing dissatisfaction with slow pace of nuclear disarmament. Additionally, the treaty leaves open critical questions, including whether or not state parties have the `right' to pursue technologies that allow for domestic production of fuels for nuclear reactors and if modernization programs for nuclear warheads are inconsistent with the treaty. If these questions remain unresolved, the international community will find itself ill prepared to confront emerging proliferation challenges and the NPT, the linchpin of international nonproliferation and disarmament efforts, may begin to erode. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, January 29, 2017 4:42PM - 5:18PM |
M7.00003: The History of Atoms for Peace Invited Speaker: Carlton Stoiber |
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