TITANS OF NUCLEAR

Q1: How did you become interested in physics?

A1: Steven Goldfarb’s natural curiosity about the world around him and the influence of great science teachers eventually led him to a career in physics. Goldfarb started out at the University of Michigan in a few different programs, and discovered that he liked math as it connected to nature. During his time as a Physics PhD student at the University of Michigan, Goldfarb was invited to spend time at CERN in Switzerland to help prepare equipment for testing. Steven Goldfarb now works on the Atlas Experiment at CERN.

Q2: What were you first involved in at CERN?

A2: Steven Goldfarb joined CERN as they were building equipment for a new experiment, the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) Collider. This collider was built in a large, circular underground tunnel, which was necessary due to the radiation released as the electrons moved around curves. Carl Anderson’s discovery of antimatter and cosmic rays has influenced physics theories and experiments for decades after his work. Positrons are the antimatter counterparts to the electrons. These particles were collided at extremely high speeds to create photons.

Q3: What is the process of developing a physics theory and performing an experiment?

A3: Steven Goldfarb sees advancements in physics evolve from theories in two different ways. First, scientists measure patterns in nature and theorists try to explain the symmetry of the nature’s patterns and provide predictions. Sometimes these theories are tested with further measurement and sometimes these theories provide directions for exploration. Steven Goldfarb’s group at LEP was responsible for building one specific part of the Collider.

Q4: As a particle gets closer to the speed of light, does the mass increase?

A4: As a particle gets closer to the speed of light, the effective mass increases, which Steven Goldfarb simply describes as energy. This observation is a relativistic effect. The accelerator takes the light particles and gives them energy at high speed so that the fundamental particles interact with each other, either by exchanging a particle or becoming another particle. The particles are accelerated through each other thousands of times, while sensors record the interesting and more complex interactions, but ignore the more common quirks of the interaction.

Q5: How do you plan ahead for future technology available by the time the sensor gets built and implemented in the experiments?

A5: Steven Goldfarb and the physics research community pushes industry to develop technology and make electronics fast enough and small enough to achieve the results needed in sensors. As a PhD student, Goldfarb was involved with the construction of the detector at CERN and took data from LEP during production of Z bosons. New experiments are always under way, even during construction of upcoming experiments, and allow technology to evolve with the testing.

Q6: What do scientists do in between experiments?

A6: Steven Goldfarb and the other team members at CERN are constantly working on building or deconstructing experiments and processing data in between. More precise data comes from repetition of experiments, so there is always lots of data analysis and new methods are always needed for advanced experiments. The unknowns about dark matter and expansion of the universe will push further experiments, as did the unknowns about neutrinos.

Q7: What detectors are used in the physics experiments?

A7: CERN uses its own detectors in collisions, four in total (such as the Atlas detector that Steven Goldberg currently works on), which surround the points in which the beams cross paths. The beam is divided into packets of protons, each which contain 100 billion protons, and beams are crossed 40 million times per second. When two packets cross, there are about 40-50 head-on collisions, but not all collisions interact. The detectors snap pictures when interesting interactions happen, which can be later analyzed. Goldfarb stresses that CERN cannot process all the data independently, and instead depend on institutions all across the world to analyze data and return plots of events back to CERN.

Q8: What are you looking for in the data pulled from the physics experiments?

A8: Steven Goldfarb currently spends a lot of time studying the Higgs boson particle and measuring its properties. His overall goal is to observe something new, with a special interest in dark matter. Goldfarb is less involved in the analysis side of the experiments, but works with many student groups at different times of the year who visit CERN to study. Steven Goldfarb’s role now is more centered around educating others about science and how to make decisions based on data.

Q1: What got you initially interested in nuclear energy?

A1: Yves Desbazeille was initially interested in being an electrical engineer and gained competence in many different systems, especially power-related. Desbazeille grew up in France and moved to the U.S. after spending ten years in the French industry. Political and media influence is rare in France, but there is a lot of influence from the German policy on nuclear. Desbazeille started his career working at EDF, working up from engineer to project manager and also got involved with the U.S. EPR, which was a U.S. version of the European pressurized reactor. The project died out due to financial challenges, and the cost of nuclear energy continues to be a hurdle in competing with other energy sources, even when renewables cannot perform consistently.

Q2: Why aren’t renewable energies, such as wind, penalized for erratic performance by utility companies?

A2: Regulations prevent utility companies from penalizing renewable energies for erratic performance, which Yves Desbazeille sees as a negative impact to nuclear energy and actually encourages renewable energy sources to perform inconsistently. This pattern of renewables is consistent in many different countries. Desbazeille spent time in Brussels and Laos during his time as a nuclear project manager. EDF is currently involved in an EPC contract at Hinkley Point C, a nuclear reactor under construction in the U.K. A contract for difference allows investors security and foresight into the future of the energy generation plant as the price of power fluctuates. Higher interest rates are utilized to account for the high level of risk involved in the projects. Desbazeille also sees volatility in the carbon credit program, which impacts the competitiveness of investors who are considering many different power investment options.

Q3: What challenges did you experience as a project manager at the Hinkley Point C reactor in the U.K.?

A3: Yves Desbazeille was project manager with EDF at the Hinkley Point C reactor in the U.K. and experiences a challenge of convincing the commission there was a “0:19 case load?”, which some member states understood, but others did not and considered themselves crusaders opposing nuclear power. In France, there are still some cross-party challenges about whether to keep nuclear power or not, but in Germany, there is a cross-party agreement, at this time, to not pursue nuclear power. EDF also represents the industry in the EU, based in Brussels, which is home to many NGO’s.

Q4: How are nuclear power decisions made in Brussels for the EU?

A4: Yves Desbazeille is involved in representing the nuclear power industry with Foratom for the European Union in Brussels. Decisions in the European Union are made within three legs: the Commission, which proposes policy, the European parliament, which approves or amends proposals, and the Council, which determines whether to execute or revise the proposal. There are two types of governmental text coming from the European Union: directives, which are supposed to be translated into national legislation, and regulations, which are directly applicable in each country. Each member state has their own responsibility when it comes to deciding its energy mix, but the Commission has full responsibility when it comes to climate and renewable policies.

Q5: As a representative of the nuclear trade, what leg of the European Union do you deal with most directly?

A5: As a representative of the nuclear trade, Yves Desbazeille deals most direction with the European Commission. The Euratom Treaty, signed in 1957, was established at the same time as the Treaty creating the European Economic Community, with a focus on developing peaceful use of nuclear power for Europe. Challenges include environmental waste and the economy of the power market. France is responsible for about half of the low-carbon power generation in the European Union, but there are some very strong anti-nuclear voices in the EU. Desbazeille sees praise for Germany’s pursuit of renewable energy, despite the positive results from France’s low-carbon emissions through the use of nuclear power. The European Union has loop flows of power, which allows member states to rely on power generation elsewhere to support demand during erratic renewable performance.

Q6: How did you become a representative of the nuclear trade for the European Union?

Q6: There are two reasons Yves Desbazeille became a representative of the nuclear trade for the European Union: his history in industry, and the 5 years previously spent in Brussels, involved in other non-nuclear energy policy work. All countries with nuclear power are involved in the representation for the nuclear trade, with the exception of Germany, which does not have any nuclear power. The representation meets with its representative member states to understand perceptions, expectations, and needs regarding nuclear power, and address any challenges or difficulties that arise. There are currently 126 reactors in the EU, and the group is raising political awareness to maintain these operational facilities. There are environmental and economic benefits to be lost if nuclear energy is diminished in the EU. Nuclear power is a reliable base load, and if the fleet is diminished, many competencies in the technology would be lost, including operators, manufacturers, and maintenance crews.

Q7: Is there a political party in the EU that is vocal about being pro-nuclear?

A7: The U.K. is showing interest in nuclear power investment, which, even though the U.K is leaving the EU, Yves Desbazeille sees as progress because it shows that state’s perspectives can be changed. In order to change more minds, nuclear supporters need to communicate more about the timeline of de-carbonization benefits and the capability of industry innovation. Desbazeille sees small modular reactors (SMR’s) possibly helping member states see potential for the technology. Improvements and advancements in safety features will also impact the future perception of nuclear energy.

Q8: How come the incident at Fukushima wasn’t promoted in the EU as a success for nuclear energy?

A8: One of Yves Desbazeille’s struggles within the EU is that nuclear power is not a rational debate within the member states, but is more of an emotional debate. Confidence takes longer to establish than it does to lose it, and fear causes lost confidence in nuclear technology. Coal production and power generation causes many deaths a year, but the public does not have the same perception about this industry as it does of nuclear energy.

Q9: What does the future of the world look like for nuclear power?

A9: Yves Desbazeille’s main vision for the future is to prevent climate change from happening, Nuclear technology needs to be understood by decision makers and there must be collaboration between different power generation industries. Nuclear should be considered as one of the solutions. Small modular reactors (SMR’s) may be influential in the future because they are a flexible generation solution and could be manufactured more efficiently.

Q1: How did you become a nuclear lawyer?

A1: Paul Murphy started as project finance attorney, working predominantly in the power industry with Bechtel Power Corporation, which had both fossil and nuclear groups. Paul Murphy was asked to participate in a working group at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for Innovative Financing for Nuclear, which led to his career as a nuclear lawyer. The high project costs of nuclear plant construction and history of high impact delays led to challenges in project financing and lenders were nervous to provide money for the project. Most power plant construction is financed through project finance, but this model was not well-suited for nuclear construction, which has historically been built supported by balance sheet financing. Deregulation in the electric utility market, related to natural gas and renewable energy, has made it difficult to build and operate nuclear power generation plants.

Q2: Could a state purchase a nuclear plant if it was in danger of shutting down?

A2: Paul Murphy has seen municipalities take over nuclear plants in danger of shutting down, but states have not historically gotten involved. Long term benefits of nuclear power plants are not realized in the 30-year financial model used by the states. After Chernobyl in 1986, Italy shut down all nuclear power plants and ended up paying a higher price for power than France, which had continued to operate nuclear plants. This is similar to Germany’s decision to cut all nuclear power at Fukushima and focus on renewable energy. When solar and wind are not able to provide power, Germany imports energy from France’s nuclear base.

Q3: What is the innovative aspect to nuclear financing?

A3: Paul Murphy recognizes that the U.S. is still experiencing first-type problems with the new nuclear technologies from the lender perspective. Until plants have been built on-time and on-budget, lenders will approach the projects with extreme conservatism. Possible solutions include government support or executing a power purchase agreement (PPA) with high end users to develop revenue, such as used in France. The possibility of fleet construction with small modular reactors, in which the reactors could be built in stages to kickstart revenue before all reactors are constructed. Cheapest and easiest to build projects may not support long term goals.

Q4: Is nuclear regulation hard to change from a political standpoint?

A4: Paul Murphy sees public perception about changes to nuclear regulation is driven by the reasons for the changes. One example is China, where the pollution has become such a health risk that the cost increase of nuclear power becomes acceptable and necessary. Intermittent generation only works if there is backbone energy source to step in when that is not generated, and if the cost is only analyzed as being used for backup energy, it becomes much more expensive. When moving away from a competitive market, the case has to be made to population that goals are not being met and the decisions are necessary for the future of energy. Energy policy changes affect the whole spectrum of the energy industry and economics.

Q5: The U.S. population takes energy availability for granted, but intermittent energy sources are being incentivized, putting the availability at risk.

A5: Paul Murphy believes intermittent energy will only work as a base load if there is grid-scale energy storage, which may or may not be feasible. The nuclear energy industry is highly regulated, but renewables such as solar are not, especially when comparing the waste of energy production (nuclear waste vs. solar panels). Collaboration between agencies and industries is required to solve the energy problem and meet the climate change goals that are currently not being achieved. Not directly addressing the issues now will only lead to greater challenges and issues later.

Q6: Why was the climate change problem described as “two degrees” and why doesn’t it have an impact?

A6: Paul Murphy sees a lot of the technical analysis is lost on the general population and the impacts of a two degree climate change have not been communicated effectively. The ability to take your area of expertise and knowledge and convert it into a simple path forward. In other industries, a certain level of risk has been accepted, but people have a very low risk tolerance of nuclear power generation. People also associate nuclear power with nuclear weapons, even though the two industries are very separated. Initiatives happening at the state level, including reaching out to the public with the facts, are compelling to the general population. The person who delivers the information and the way it is delivered makes a difference in the public perception that they are receiving objective information or being deceived.

Q7: What did you do after you left Bechtel?

A7: Paul Murphy returned to private practice after leaving Bechtel and working on financing for reactors in Abu Dhabi. He is now with Gowling WLG working in the international nuclear industry as a nuclear lawyer. The minimal changes in the U.S. nuclear energy industry is not representative of the large nuclear power growth around the world. UAE is one of the newcomer countries that had no previous nuclear energy industry. A lot of countries see nuclear power as a solution to a problem, but there are three core issues holding back development of the program: financing, human resources development, and public acceptance. Long term bonds are created between countries to share nuclear technology and drives the overall bilateral relationships internationally.

"Path to Nuclear
How did you enter this line of work?

It started for Laura with the made-for-TV movie, “The Day After,” which depicted the day after a nuclear attack. They chose Lawrence, Kansas, as the setting, which was just a few miles away from where she grew up. Even though she knew it was just a story, it was extra compelling to her. For a lot of people of that generation, it was like the “War of the Worlds.” It got the attention of the public about the risks of nuclear war and the challenges that that creates for the United States. She was a freshman at college and it was her first time away from home for that long of a time. It hit her even harder that she wasn't home to see with her own eyes that her house had not been incinerated and her family was still there. She knew she wanted to do international relations and even before seeing the movie, she had this idea that the US-Soviet battle for Global dominance was the big International question of the time. She arrived on campus thinking she wanted to be a Sovietologist. She started taking Russian and she took some Soviet foreign policy classes, but she did terribly at all of them and was kicked out of Russian class. So she decided to broaden her focus to international relations, looking at how do you end wars, what causes terrorism (terrorism circa the 1980s, that was a very different kind of terrorism and big-picture around international relations. This was at Princeton University She then did a Masters at MIT in Defense and Arms Control Studies--it's now called the Security Studies Program. It was a perfect degree for someone who wanted to go to Washington and save the world, which is what she wanted to do. But all the advice she had gotten was that she needed a Master's degree to do that; that was a place of entry. She found a program with classes that were exactly the things she wanted to learn about. She got to learn about budget battles at the Pentagon and the history of arms control, and she wrote a thesis on the chemical weapons destruction program and the tension that created with the arms control peace community and the environmentalist community. It was very fascinating research and it was a great time to dig in and pack her brain full of useful knowledge. Nuclear was a fairly general topic in the national security field when Laura finished her Master's degree. This was the late 80s, early 90s, and there was a nuclear standoff between the US and the Soviet Union. She started working as an administrative assistant at what is now the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. It was led by Ash Carter, and some of the work that he did with Bill Perry at Stanford involved watching the Soviet Union stumble towards collapse. They started thinking about what that collapse would mean for the weapons of mass destruction that were there? They laid the intellectual groundwork to recognize that the weapons of mass destruction threat from the Soviet Union was going to be more about their weakness then their strength and we needed to think about not confrontation but cooperation as a tool to manage that challenge. Laura was part of the research team (the most junior part of that research team) working on how to reduce the weapons of mass destruction threat in a cooperative way. The thinking was that we needed to put money on the table to make that happen, that the United States needed to work with these countries to provide resources--financial but also expertise--to make sure that they comply with all the Soviet-era arms control. They' were also very worried about the warheads that were in Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan at the time that the Soviet Union fell apart. The number one US policy at that time was to make sure that there was only one nuclear successor state to the Soviet Union. All of those warheads had to go back to Russia, and they had to do it quickly and safely. That was one of the earliest things we were able to do with the Russians--we worked with them and their Ministry of Defence to safely and securely remove all of these warheads on trains from Minsk, and the Black Earth country of Ukraine, and the steppes of Kazakhstan, over millions of raill miles, to make sure they weren't harvested by terrorist groups or separatist groups and that there weren't any accidents because they were moving too quickly or unsafely. We provided a lot of safety and security equipment to support that removal.

De-Nuclearizing Post Soviet Union
How did it come together and what was the timeframe to move all these materials?

It was between 1992 and 1995. Ukraine was the last stuff to leave. The Russians had started even before we started helping them. The US got to the point of having the resources to help and the legal authority to help through Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar from different sides of the aisle, both committed to bipartisan, statesmanlike, national security. They took the research done by Ash Carter and Bill Perry and the teams at Harvard and Stanford, and they turned it into legislation which bears their names, the Nunn-Lugar legislation. That became the beginning of two decades-- and still going. That was passed in the fall of 1991 and it was kind of being implemented then, and some pieces were still being implemented in the late Bush administration. When the Clinton Administration came in, Ash Clinton came into the Pentagon, Bill Perry came into the Pentagon, and we’ve had the opportunity to really build the program and live it out. At that point, the program was four hundred million dollars a year, which is decimal dust in the Pentagon sense. But it was always extremely politically fraught. Not everyone in Congress got onboard with the notion that helping Russia was in our security interest. That was a very quick spin that many in Congress were never able to make. Getting the money from Congress was a big challenge and building a program from the bottom up was a challenge. In the early day is President Clinton would go out and make a speech in Kiev and say “we're going to spend 240 million dollars over the next three years to help denuclearize Ukraine” and that meant you had to work from the top down, you had to solidify the political instinct inside the country to take the steps we needed to take. But over time, if it was going to be more than just a two or three-year program--and it turned into a couple of decades--then you need to say, “next year, here's the stuff that we really need to do, here are the top-priority things, here are the things that are next in line, this is the right sequence of things, and to do that's going to cost x amount of money,” It started out being a hundred percent in the Defense Department then the Defense Department would send pockets of money to the State Department and the Energy Department for them to do things that they were good at that Defense wasn’t. Over time, a decision was made that the State Department would budget and ask for its own pot of money and the Energy Department would ask for its own pot, and that allowed the program to grow from something like four hundred million dollars in the early days to over 2 billion dollars at its peak during the George W. Bush Administration. And to work across not just nuclear, but also chemical and biological weapons. We did get a single nuclear state coming out of the breakup. There were three countries besides Russia that had strategic weapons that could have reached the United States. These countries didn't have the wherewithal to actually use these weapons in any serious way. It was a matter of security that they be removed so that they could be properly stored, managed, and ultimately dismantled inside Russia. So we achieved a single nucleus succesor state, which was our top priority. Russia also continued to comply with all of its strategic arms treaties, even when they didn't have the money to spend on it and the US provided resources. The program didn't write checks to Russians or Ukrainians or Kazakhstanis. The US provided assistance in kind and expertise and services that would be paid for out of accounts in the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Energy Department, so it's not like the money could have been diverted because there was no money, but there was assistance and on-the-ground activity. That led to not only carving up missiles, shutting down factories, and blowing up silos, but also locking down nuclear materials and making sure there’s a more modern approach to securing nuclear materials. The Soviet approach had been all about hiding them, and they were all in secret cities--the populace wasn't even supposed to know about it. They allowed underbrush to grow around them, they were situated in forests, and they weren't on any normal map. Their big fear was a NATO attack. So shifting that in a post-Soviet phase and then a post-9/11 phase--when you're talking about non-state actors, insiders who maybe pilfering material and bringing it out-- you come to a whole different way of thinking about how to prevent unauthorized access to this material.

The Changing Nuclear Threat
It's interesting how, over time, the threat has morphed. It seems like we have to stay constantly vigilant to adapt to the new considerations of each era.

Right. The Threat Reduction Program was able to do that. They were able to evolve the underlying authorization legislation to expand to new threats and to give new authorities to different departments. The Energy Department's budget and activity level went up very high as the big hardware stuff that the Defense Department was good at doing wrapped up, and the Energy Department's materials work became the driver of the program, particularly after 9/11 where we realized, these are not the terrorists from the Red Army Brigade or Shining Path. These are terrorists who are organized, wealthy, and apocalyptic, who say that they are owed 2 to 4 billion deaths as compensation for crimes perpetrated by Crusaders over the millennia. There's only a few ways to achieve 2 to 4 billion deaths, and a nuclear bomb is of them. In some of the caves Al-Qaeda was hiding in, there are some bomb designs that weren't as far off as you would want them to be. IOt was and continues to be an enormous concern, moving from arms control compliance to secure material. And not just secure material in the former Soviet Union, but globally. We looked at things we used to think were normal, at the intersection of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy and nuclear research. We and the Soviets had oursleves proliferated, if you will, during the Atoms for Peace program, dozens of highly-enriched uranium research reactors all over the world, never thinking that would have anything to do with a nuclear bomb. Post-9/11 we realized that highly enriched uranium research reactor could be stolen. The security levels of the University are not particularly high at MIT. They have a highly enriched uranium research reactor on campus. It’s had some security upgrades since 9/11, but it's mainly at the Cambridge Constabulary that provides the physical protection for that--that's not what we think of as the kind of protection that nuclear weapons have. After that work Laura worked at the Pentagon for five years on those kinds of programs. She moved to the Energy Department and worked on the sister program where their focus was on how to get rid of US and Russian plutonium that was coming out of nuclear weapons. As she was leaving government in 2001, she had seen evidence that there was an interesting movement going on amongst her friends at the Energy Department and some of the nuclear related NGOs. She heard that Ted Turner was starting to get interested in nuclear. Then she heard that Senator Sam Nunn had been brought in to be part of this. She was invited to some brainstorming sessions and she thought, “This is going to be cool. I want to be part of this.” The nuclear threat initiative was launched in January of 2001. She was scheduled to leave government that month and she really, really, really wanted to be part of this nuclear threat initiative. She was fortunate to come on as one of the founding Vice Presidents. She focused at that time on the former Soviet Union and Russian new independent states. It was a way to say, “we're going to take this Nunn-Lugar concept as a central idea, that you deal with threats through cooperation instead of conflict. And we're going to do the private sector version of this. We're going to unshackle ourselves from the federal acquisition regulations, from the federal appropriations process, and from government lawyers and their cautiousness. We're want to work on those same goals and in some cases with some of the same people, both in the United States and overseas, and in a way that is more flexible, more creative, and more active, and we’re really going to be be a do tank rather than a think tank.” It was both a scary and heady time. Ted Turner had given us what was, at that time, valued at $250 million. Ted Turner became interested in this topic because he's always had a global vision, and a couple years before, he had pretty much bailed the US out of our United Nations arrears. He had created a UN foundation by writing a personal check for something like 3 million dollars. He said, “This is crazy. The United Nation serves United States interests, not on a tactical basis but on a conceptual basis. We should pay our dues. Maybe a large private donors can make a difference on these big cosmic things that are otherwise seen as government responsibilities.” He joked about buying a nuclear weapon so he could sit at the arms control table and say, “everyone should give up their nuclear weapons.” He had out of the box thinking, a global, long-term perspective, and the financial wherewithal to empower people with gravitas and reputation like Sam Nunn and with on-the-ground performance like Laura. He said, “let's go change the world.”

NTI's Accomplishments
What were some of the ways you set out to change the world?

What were some of the program goals?

We recognized the challenge of highly enriched uranium and reactors and civilian institutes globally. The Energy Department at the time had four or five different programs that were doing different pieces of it, but not motivated from a national security point of view. There was one facility outside Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia--what was then Serbia. It had 80 kg of highly enriched uranium and fresh fuel. During the bombing of Belgrade during the Balkan War, the Russians who had provided that material during the 1950s called the United States and let them know to stay away from that. The US had sanctions on Serbia at the time resulting from the the Balkan War. There was not an opportunity to engage with them. Those sanctions came off about a year later, and Laura went there and met with the head of the lab at the research facility, their air regulator, their foreign Ministry, and someone from the IAEA who had been visiting and sponsoring research at the facility. It turned out that the Serbians weren't concerned about the highly enriched uranium, even though it was not well-secured. When Laura went to visit, no one checked her papers, no one challenged her when she drove up, and there wasn't much fencing. They said that the HEU is performing fine, but we can't run the reactor because we have an overflowing spent fuel pool that was not intended to last for 20 years of storage. When the Soviet Union fell apart, they stopped taking back the spent fuel. They had HEU mixed with LEU. The HEU was giving off a lot of radiation, and though the LEU was not, it was all mixed together in the pool. They believed they didn’t have a bomb problem, they believed they had a radiological problem. They also had dumps of radiological mess, part of which had been part of the cleanup post-Chernobyl. There was no one in the US government who was willing to say, “this is a national security threat.” What NTI did was identify and pull together all the different programs available across the US government that would address this, and then filled in the gaps to make a whole coherent package. They had a letter of intent signed by seven different entities--including entities inside Serbia as well as the US government and NTI--that describe the basic steps to address the Serbians’ problems. That problem was, from NTI's point of view and the US point of view, to get the highly enriched uranium out of there. If we hadn't been there to actually find out what the issues were, to do the research on all the programs that could help, and to serve as the filler in that mix, that material would still be there. Not only were we able to say, “that's four bombs-worth of material that's now gone and back to Russia to be blended down and secured,” but we created a model. NTI can’t afford to do this for everything, but we've now shown that there are different pieces of this puzzle that can be applied to these other things. A year-and-a-half later, the Energy Department set up a program that brought together all of these separate strains into a single mission that was focused on environmental terrorism, called the Global Threat Reduction Initiative. That became the launchpad for dozens of removals and several security upgrades at facilities that hadn't been understood as proliferation challenges.

Path to Ambassadorship
How did this lead to your appointment at the IAEA?

Laura was at NTI for 8 years when then-candidate Obama was talking about nuclear security as a priority. As a Senator he had made himself an understudy for Senator Lugar. He was already on board with recognizing that this could be a real problem. On April of 2009, after his inauguration, he laid out the Prague Agenda about his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. In his view it had four pieces. One was reducing the number and role of nuclear weapons in US National Security-- that was the arms control agenda. It also involved revitalising the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a mechanism to deal with rogue states. There was securing nuclear material around the world, and that was the nuclear terrorism part of the agenda. And there was developing a new framework for global nuclear energy collaboration which was the peaceful uses part of the agenda. She was very interested in going to work for this president who had such an interest in the things she cared about. She was asked to join the White House in February, but she wasn't able to take up the post until July of 2009. She spent seven years at the White House working on the National Security Council, running the four different nuclear security summits, dealing with the whole range of weapons of mass destruction issues including wmd terrorism, she dealt with the Syria chemical weapons challenge, and she launched the global public health agenda--she was not bored. In the second half of Obama's second term, the US Ambassador that represented the us in Vienna to the IAEA and the other UN agencies was called back early to a very senior post at the State Department, and Laura went to Susan Rice, the National Security Advisor, and said, “Susan, geeks like me don't get a lot of shots at being an Ambassador, but this is a job I can do. I've been working closely with the IAEA closely since my time at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. I know the mission and the people. Is this is something I can have a shot at?” She said, “yeah, let's do that!” Iit took about a year for Laura to get nominated and then it took another seven months for her to get confirmed. In July of 2016, she took a post in Vienna as a US Ambassador. She walked in with familiarity of the actors. Many of her fellow ambassadors had been involved in the nuclear security summit process. She knew the leadership at the IAEA. But she knew a very narrow piece of them--she mostly focused on national security and there's more that the IAEA does. She was mainly focused on the Iran deal. She made sure the IAEA had the resources needed to carry out its verification role. They had to invent some new technology and new methods. She had to make the US National Laboratory system available to answer their questions as they encountered unexpected things in the course of their role. She made sure that people got along at the political level. She did a lot of behind-the-scenes work with ambassadors.

The Iran Deal
Did you sit between the IAEA and the US government?

Laura did, but she wasn’t the only voice. She was the formal official voice, but her counterparts at the State Department and at the NSE all had their own relationships with the IAEA and senior ambassadors in Vienna. It was important that they had trust in each other and were well-coordinated. It was important to Laura that she never be undercut. She managed that through good process and good will. It doesn't do Washington any good if their ambassador is a step behind on policy. Laura was not involved in negotiating the Iran deal-- she has spent most of her non-proliferation career saying she doesn't do Iran! But she had to learn Iran to go to Vienna. There were days it seemed that officials there weren't going to get the deal done. It took that whole, diverse team-- not just in Vienna but also back in the US-- to allow the work to proceed 24-7 on the technical backup to the policy and the scientific negotiations happening in Vienna. Some of the people who worked on the Iran deal are at NTI now. We’re all thinking about how to use what we learned in Iran in our work in North Korea. A lot will translate, and a lot won’t. North Korea has as many as 60 actual bombs; Iran had no bombs. You work backward from there. It will be much more complex. Plus, there are chemical and biological weapons programs in North Korea that are strong. You can’t reduce the nuclear threat without taking on the chemical and biological risks that are there.

Materials Security as Risk Management
Other than North Korea what are the other challenges the organization looks at?

Laura is focused on moving materials security from a threat reduction model to a risk management model. Think about the Belgrade example: whatever risk was at that facility was no longer there once we moved the material. But it’s not like that for the 22 countries that still have that material-- that includes countries with nuclear weapons like the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, plus Indian, Pakistan, Korea, and whatever you believe to be true about Israel. That’s 9 countries. They’ll have nuclear materials for the foreseeable future. They’ll have long term stewardship issues. It's not about removal of materials, it’s about risk management. We need to stop thinking exclusively about the notion that threat begins and ends, and that you reduce it through a binary. We need to look at it as an enduring problem. That risk will exist whether its terrorists risk or other kinds of risk that we haven't perceived. The risks change. Your ability to manage those risks is the hallmark of success. Are we adjusting our thoughts to those shifting risks? Are we dealing with those risks over decades or centuries rather than just the next appropriation,, the next security summit, the next short term goal? There's a belief that we’ll end the nuclear security work. But we can’t get rid of all the material. So how do we set up security culture in our energy and weapons facilities?

American Nuclear Influence
How can we bring nuclear energy ot a country so that the IAEA is present and thus reduce the nuclear weapons risk?

Laura does think about this. Going back to Atoms for Peace, US nuclear commerce has been understood within a narrow community as a piece of our nonproliferation strategy. That’s why it was part of President Obama’s Prague Agenda. When the US sells technology overseas, it comes wrapped in A package called a 1-2-3 Agreement that contains a number of non proliferation commitments that the recipient country makes. It gives us visibility and access to their peaceful nuclear energy program. It gives us a chance to transfer our high-quality security culture, our safety culture, our quality operations culture. It helps these countries utilize nuclear energy in a safe, secure, and economically viable way. It also gives us visibility at the ground level. IF someone starts talking about separating plutonium or fast reactors or closed fuel cycles, or anything else that raises alarm bells, then we have visibility. You become aware of research done in an associated lab that might be concerning. And you can see where the materials are going. Anything the US sells we have a veto vote with regards to onwards transfer, with regards to whether they change the form of that material. And that applies to all the material in the country, not just what the US ells. These are very powerful nonproliferation tools. The challenge we face today, is the US doesn’t have enough attractive nuclear commerce that make it worthwhile for countries to wrap themselves up in this. We don’t have a product offering that would help us forge that relationship where we can have a nonproliferation role in their future. We don’t have an attractive nuclear offering. We still have the largest fleets of nuclear power plants in the world, even though they’re declining and not being replaced. But this is a wasting asset. IF we don’t figure out how to get back in the game on nuclear commerce, we’ll lose those nonproliferation influence tools. That’s why Laura is so committed to the advanced reactor opportunity. If we can do it right, both from a commercial promotion point of view but also a national security point of view, we can look at that diversity if advanced reactor designs in the US. We have the chance to do it right. It’s time we get serious about that."

At this time we are still producing show notes for this episode. Please check back again at a future date.

At this time we are still producing show notes for this episode. Please check back again at a future date.

Q1: How did you end up at University of Wisconsin in Madison?

A1: Tom Fanning was first exposed to nuclear energy during a project in his high school physics class. As a Wisconsin native, UW-Madison’s nuclear engineering program was a natural fit. Fanning became interested in the safety side of the industry following both the Challenger and Chernobyl incidents. Fanning pursued his doctorate degree with a focus on numerical methods for neutron transport. In 1986, Argonne conducted one-of-a-kind testing of the inherent safety of EBR-II, a sodium-cooled reactor. These tests, called the Shutdown Heat Removal Tests, included unprotected loss of flow, which simulated pump failure, and unprotected loss of heat. Inherent safety is achieved because expansion shuts the reaction down and natural circulation removes the heat from the system. Fanning now works at Argonne National Laboratory.

Q2: How have you collaborated around the world with your work?

A2: Tom Fanning is the U.S. representative for the Sodium Fast Reactor Safety and Operations project management board and meets with countries around the world to share research in this technology. Fanning also represented the U.S. on the Generation IV Expert Group, which advises the policy group that manages Generation IV activities around the world. Each country has different design preferences, such as fuel type or core supports, and regulatory environments. Being involved and engaged in the international community allows the U.S. the understand and share different approaches in the industry.

Q3: As you engage with different countries, do you notice core differences in fundamentals and design philosophy?

A3: Tom Fanning engages with different countries to share approaches on nuclear fundamentals, design, and also regulation. South Korea is very aligned with the U.S. fundamentals and philosophies and is partnering with Argonne on development of the Prototype Gen Four Sodium Fast Reactor (PGSFR). Sodium has better thermal conductivity boiling margin than water. One fundamental design option is the decay heat removal system, which may be a pool type system. U.S. preference is to utilize the cold pool and other countries utilize the heat pool, which require different complexities of modeling.

Q4: Why is there such a focus on removing the heat from a sodium pool?

A4: Tom Fanning sees a focus on heat removal in sodium-cooled reactors to improve the ability to respond in the event something goes wrong. if the heat is left alone to rise, it will eventually creep out. Using sodium buys you time, but industry also want to make reactors small and compact. Fast reactors have a high power density and are more compact than other units. Having decay heat removal systems, which consist of just pipes and heat exchangers, designed to the right capacity, allows buy incident response time.

Q5: What nuclear work have you modeled in simulation?

A5: Tom Fanning’s models are characterized by codes, as used in computer programming and also as used as codes and standards. Some of these codes were developed at Argonne specially for fast reactors. One example is MC-Squared, which completes cross-section processing for fast spectrum systems, which feeds into a variational modal transport code for calculating the reactor physics calculation. Multiple levels of code create a workflow of tools allowing the team to take data into the design space and plant modeling space. Many of the codes, such as the Safety Analysis System (SAS) are decades old and have gone through many different versions.

Q6: Who is using your codes, such as the SAS system?

A6: A number of companies in the U.S. have licenses for Tom Fanning’s modeling codes as they pursue fast reactor concepts. The Japanese Atomic Energy Agency has also used the model in the past, as well as the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute. The U.S. likes to benchmark their codes with other countries’ codes through the International Atomic Energy Agency. If nuclear energy is going to be pursued worldwide, Fanning believes fast reactors are the best option. Fast reactors have better resource utilization of uranium than water-cooled reactors, which includes recycling and reusing the fuel. By burning all of the fuel to completion, the nuclear waste is minimized and need to be contained and stored for much shorter time. Passive safety is also integral in fast reactor technology.

Q7: What is the importance of nuclear technology?

A7: Tom Fanning sees nuclear power as a disruptor in the industry and promising base load source of power (bottom 80%), even though the variability of demand (top 20% of power) is a technical hurdle for nuclear at this point. In China, their first and foremost priority is building big reactors to take care of the base load and will figure out the variability details once the infrastructure is in place. Nuclear can play a role in modernization and social and economic improvements across the globe.

Q1: How did you get into nuclear engineering?

A1: Hussein Khalil was born in Egypt and moved to the United States during middle school. His interest in math and science coupled with a desire to contribute to the wellbeing of society in the future led him to pursue nuclear engineering at Kansas State University. Khalil received his PhD at MIT where he focused on Reactor Physics to describe neutron distribution in light water reactors and predict detailed distribution of the reaction rates in the assemblies and pins in the reactor core. In order to verify the predictions, Khalil completed post-irradiation examinations of fuel pins and used instruments to measure the temperature and other readings to determine the neutron flux.

Q2: What did you learn about what’s happening inside of these cores?

A2: Hussein Khalil used instrumentation and sensors to get at physical parameters in the core and used models and analysis to interpret those parameters. These analyses are helpful for designing better reactor systems in terms of performance and safety. Reducing computational uncertainty allows a design closer to the design of the materials, which maximizes the amount of energy you can extract from a reactor. The modeling tools have multiphysics capabilities and are also used to describe the heat transfer, fluid flow, structural mechanics, and chemical reaction effects in the reactor.

Q3: Tell us about some of your early projects with new types of reactors.

A3: Hussein Khalil joined Argonne National Labs at a time in which the Integral Fast Reactor Program was ongoing. The interest in fast neutron reactors is focused on improvements to the nuclear fuel cycle that could be made, such as making more efficient use of uranium resources and recycling of fuel that is discharged. Approximately 95% of the uranium still remains in a light water reactor fuel assembly, with about 1% plutonium, which can be extracted and used in a fast reactor. The binding energy of the nuclei in a nucleus goes through a minimum of very heavy elements or extremely light elements, and goes through a maximum in between. Energy can be generated by splitting very heavy elements, known as fission, or by combining very light elements, known as fusion.

Q4: Tell me about higher processing.

A4: Hussein Khalil has worked with higher processing, which is a type of electrochemical processing. In this process, used fuel is the anode of the system and the cathode is the heavy elements that are transported through the electrolyte by electric current. These heavy elements get deposited at the cathode and are separated from the fission products which stay in the electrolyte. By changing the voltage, you can control which elements you filter out.

Q5: What did your work with the integral fast reactor lead to?

A5: In 2000, Hussein Khalil was involved in the Gen 4 initiative, which was an international effort focused on determining what the future generation of nuclear reactors would look like. Multiple reactor systems were chosen at the time to be deployed, but were not brand new designs. Many of these fast reactor designs already existed at Argonne National Lab. Argonne’s reactor resume includes heavy water reactors, which uses deuterium oxide instead of light water as the coolant and a boiling water reactor, which was the first demonstration that a power plant could be operated using water that’s boiling in the core of a reactor. The Gen 4 program recommended pursuing three different types of fast reactors: gas-cooled, lead-cooled, and sodium-cooled. Other recommendations were high temperature reactors cooled with helium gas and molten salt reactors.

Q6: What comes out of the Gen 4 international forum?

A7: Hussein Khalil participated in the Gen 4 international forum which developed a technology roadmap for developing the new generation of nuclear reactor systems. This roadmap showed what research and development is needed to show the systems are viable, operable, and reliable. The last phase of this roadmap was envisioned as a demonstration phase, in which a prototype of the system would be built. Different countries are pursuing theses systems to different degrees, and not all countries are looking at all of the technologies.

Q7: Which method do you think would be better to guarantee a successful outcome of exploring these different technologies put forward in the Gen 4 initiative?

A7: Hussein Khalil sees intellectual property and commercial interest get in the way of a truly open international collaborative setting regarding development of Gen 4 reactors. The competitive aspect of technology development became more difficult as the systems mature, and the commercial involvement and investment money also increases as it matures. The economics of nuclear reactor construction and operation affects investment decisions, as well as factors such as safety, security, and proliferation risks. Economics can be improved by simplicity of design and cost of building materials, but it is difficult to calculate the costs and benefits of replicating and scaling a reactor design.

Q8: It is important to have diversity in the systems that are being commercially pursued because the more we can see built in the real world, the better sense we can have about how the economics are going to play out.

A8: Hussein Khalil supports a diverse approach in system development to identify and recognize different strengths in different applications. High temperature reactors could potentially deliver heat at 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, which could be used to split water to produce Hydrogen through thermochemical cycles. Thorium fuel reactors could utilize an additional source to uranium for nuclear power generation. Khalil is part of the Gateway for Acceleration Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative which focuses on forming public-private partnerships where companies have access to resources and capabilities at nuclear labs.

Q9: Do you find that industry is aware of the nuclear lab capabilities or are still learning about it?

A9: Hussin Khalil and the leadership team at Gateway for Acceleration Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) is trying to create a more streamlined process for industry to access the nuclear labs. Khalil hopes for a brand new era of nuclear technology in which the industry can take advantage of advancements in other fields, such as materials, computation, and manufacturing. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is interested in a more flexible approach to admit new technologies and innovations into the industry.