Events Archive

Reporting on the key issues raised and ignored at the 2025 Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee.

Marking 70 years since the Russel-Einstein Manifesto, and discussing Pugwash's current challenges and opportunities with the new secretary general.

All Chinese nuclear tests of the past 60 years have taken place in the Uyghur homeland of southeastern Xinjiang. How does the development and maintenance of this test site connect China's nuclear history with the current situation in that region?

An investigation into Iran's current nuclear file and the current critical juncture in U.S.-Iran relations.

Examining new sources to give a comprehensive account of China's recent nuclear weapons development.

Examining US population protection policies of the 1970s to see how leaders leveraged vulnerability gap narratives to advance diverse political and strategic objectives.

A case study to illuminate how the technical complexities of advanced weapon systems defy prediction in real-world situations and produce irreducible uncertainties for counterforce positions.

Investigating the anti-democratic changes that arise from the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

What does irreversibility mean when applied to nuclear disarmament, and what are the challenges involved?

What are the concerns and challenges for nuclear weapon policies under the second Trump administration?

What lessons can be learned from the history of nuclear activism to inform effective citizen engagement today?

What alternatives to extended nuclear deterrence might be available to Ukraine following the war?

How are Australian activists mobilizing in response to various risks posed by AUKUS?

How vulnerable are silo-based missiles to attack by modern conventional weapons?

Exploring the history and impact of the German Nuclear Archaeology Lab at Aachen.

Climatic effects from nuclear weapons use raise questions of discrimination and proportionality which are key to the laws of war. What are the implications for nuclear weapon states?

What are the implications of the ongoing U.S.-Saudi talks on a nuclear deal that may support uranium enrichment technology and nuclear power transfer to Saudi Arabia?

China has pledged not to use nuclear weapons first under any circumstances and is urging other nuclear weapon states to make the same commitment. Can such a treaty be substantive and verifiable?

How Can Nuclear Movies Help People Question Nuclear Deterrence and if these Weapons Really Provide Security?

What impacts could we expect from artificial intelligence on the evolution of nuclear strategy in coming decades?

How much trouble is Britain facing in its efforts to sustain and upgrade its nuclear arsenal?

How are physicists organizing to face the threat of nuclear weapons?

Why and how do states faced with a similar threat environment choose to develop different weapon systems as response?

What can psychology learn and teach us about how people perceive the risks of nuclear weapons, and how they may act to address these risks?

Can a US president be expected to rationally consider costs and consequences when confronted by the threat of an incoming nuclear attack?

Can arms control decision-makers overcome pressures from domestic politics, interest groups, new technologies, and multi-party strategic competition?

How did politicians and scientists in India engage with the early years of the nuclear age between Hiroshima and the Cuban Missile Crisis?

How has a nuclear weapons factory become an important part of the everyday lives of local communities in Texas?

How did it become common practice to fight wars by the systematic aerial bombing of cities and starving of civil populations?

Is there an alternative to cyberwar, deterrence and coercion as a basis for strategy in cyberspace?

Will the production of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) make nuclear power more efficient and can it be used to make nuclear explosive devices?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the first phase of the National Academies study that aims to asses nuclear war and nuclear terrorism risks?

What is driving the modernization and the build-up of the Chinese nuclear arsenal?

Why are rockets, missiles and drones so effective at coercing targeted states, and how do they damage their strategic aims?

If a nuclear escalation is avoided, how will Russia and the U.S. resume their dialogue on arms control after the conflict in Ukraine?

What is the difference between dual-use and dual purpose space systems, how to define space weapons and how to regulate them?

The U.S. Department of Defense is the world's largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter. How can the military revise its grand strategy to break the link between national security and fossil fuels?

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is on a mission of sharing nuclear knowledge while seeking to deter nuclear weapon proliferation. How does it confront such a counterintuitive mandate?

How does the emerging nuclear age differ from earlier periods of nuclear competition and what key drivers and dynamics shape this more complex nuclear environment?

How developments of new sensors and uncrewed undersea vehicles infused with artificial intelligence algorithms impact anti-submarine warfare and the survivability of ballistic missile submarines?

How do psychology and human emotions influence decisions of leaders of nuclear weapon states, including the use of nuclear threats and shaping of nuclear strategy?

The Hanford Site opened in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, created to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Today, it is the most expensive environmental cleanup job in the world and the most toxic place in America.

Indigenous perspectives may offer an alternative imagination of security based on justice to contest the dominance of deterrence and militarism.

What are the next steps towards the prohibition of the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, and how such prohibition could be made unconditional, uniform and legally binding?
 

How did the Italian community of physicists led by Edoardo Amaldi contribute to nuclear disarmament and peace during the Cold War?

Russia is no longer participating in the New START nuclear arms control treaty. What is the future of US-Russian strategic arms control?

What are Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones (NWFZs), what challenges has the African NWFZ faced and what is its significance within the larger nuclear order?

How a grassroots environmental movement against a nuclear fuel processing plant forced the Department of Energy to take notice and task a cleanup operation.

Can a new generation of remote sensing technologies, including satellite-based radar systems, detect and track Russian and Chinese mobile missile launchers?

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine transferred its nuclear weapons to Russia and acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Why did Ukraine ultimately choose the path of nuclear disarmament?

What are the challenges to having a greater gender balance in forums dealing with arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament, and how to operationalize a feminist foreign policy?

How does nuclear latency challenge nuclear non-proliferation and what are the views on the acquisition of nuclear weapons in Brazil?

What was Harry Truman's influence on U.S. nuclear history, what did he know and didn't know about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Why was the U.S. nuclear triad system created, what shaped the nuclear buildup in the Cold War and what is driving the current nuclear arsenal modernization?

Have the 21st century and the war in Ukraine exposed the limits of nuclear weapons and the international nuclear order?

Russia’s military failures in Ukraine are demonstrating a weakness of their conventional military power. This may result in a growing reliance on their nuclear arsenal, but should also make the United States and NATO re-evaluate the Russian security threat.

The new US National Defense Strategy is focused on increasing strategic rivalry with China in the Asia-Pacific and globally. How will this affect strategic stability and international security?

What has Richard Garwin learned over his long career and from his experiences of advising the government and bringing issues to the public?

How did highly enriched uranium from Soviet nuclear weapons end up providing electricity to the United States for over 20 years?

How has India’s nuclear weapon and missile program transformed over 30 years into a military-industrial-media complex?

What can antinuclear activism in the Cold War teach us about countering nuclear dangers today?

The history of six major accidents sheds light on political, social and cultural sources of the risks of nuclear power.

Can the idea and practices of nuclear justice help redress past nuclear harms and prevent future nuclear weapon use and testing?

As the US and Iran struggle to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, what are the key issues and prospects for success or failure?

Do arms control measures increase US security and constrain arms racing, and what would be the implications of limiting missile defense development?

Indigenous students from the Nuclear Princeton project examine the harmful impacts on the Navajo community and environment of Princeton research.

The nuclear age has involved the radiation contamination of a global population, of bodies, and of lands powerless to prevent this exposure.

Regimes for the control of weapons of mass destruction have been seen as important elements in the global order. This order is currently in transition, however, with possibly far reaching implications for the regimes.

The nuclear narratives accompanying nuclear weapons politics do not simply reflect nuclear policy contests but shape them, limiting how we can imagine our nuclear future.

How is nuclear verification done in practice and what challenges do nuclear inspectors face in the field?

Can computers be trained to see safeguards relevant objects given the scarcity of available images and how might this work?

Beyond the humanitarian tragedy and risks of intentional or inadvertent use of nuclear weapons and escalation, what are the implications of the Ukraine war for the multilateral nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime?

Are planned new nuclear reactor designs any safer, more secure, less costly or risk-prone than current reactors?

As a state capable of going nuclear that chose not to, what has been Brazil’s experience with the domestic and international politics of nuclear states and markets, nonproliferation, and disarmament?

How will increasing integration of digital technologies in US nuclear command, control, and communications affect cyber-vulnerabilities and nuclear crisis and nuclear war risks?

As the world faces a renewal of hostile competition among some nuclear-armed states, what kind of international security theory may help identify political arrangements capable of forestalling large-scale nuclear violence?

What are Russia’s options in the struggle with the United States and NATO over the expansion of NATO military infrastructure in Europe and future membership?

Liberal-democratic states with nuclear weapons make policy choices and justify them in ways that work to limit effective public understanding and debate about policy alternatives.

What steps can be taken to mitigate some of the many kinds of harms that war afflicts on civilians, and what lessons do current efforts to lessen civilian harm hold for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament policy?

What feasible changes in the principles, goals, and policy underlying nuclear strategy, doctrine, and force planning could be considered as part of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review to reshape the purpose of and reduce the role of nuclear weapons?

What do China’s expanding nuclear forces and military space, cyber, and artificial intelligence capabilities and changes in its strategic posture mean for its relationship with the United States?

Verifying the denuclearization of North Korea could benefit from information not derived from classified sources or methods and available for civil society analysis to supplement inspections and build confidence.

At their June 2021 summit, Presidents Biden and Putin agreed that the United States and Russia will begin an integrated bilateral strategic stability dialogue to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.

The AUKUS deal to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia would be the first ever transfer of nuclear submarine technology and weapon-grade material for use in a military application to a non-nuclear weapons state.

In the United States, national security spending constitutes more than half of all federal discretionary spending. Decisions on the national security budget are the consequence of a complex, highly political process.

The UN has launched a diplomatic process to achieve a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. 

The Pentagon is currently planning to replace its current arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with a brand-new missile force, known as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD).

The United States for many decades has been developing plans to prepare for and “prevail” in a large-scale nuclear war.  

A key challenge for Iran's new President, Ebrahim Raisi, will be the talks with the United States and other countries on the future of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

For 40 years, the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control has held security dialogues with the Soviet Academy of Sciences and then with peers in China and India.

What insights does the 1954-1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis offer for current concerns of a US, China, and Taiwan conflict turning into nuclear war?

A referendum on Scotland’s independence is now possible, opening up the question of the future of UK nuclear weapons, all of which are based there.

The lead U.S. negotiator of the 2010 New START agreement with Russia explains how it was won and what it means for the future of nuclear arms control.

The election of President Biden has opened up possibilities for arms control advocates to reduce nuclear threats and budgets.

Could state of the art and proposed antineutrino detector technologies see clandestine nuclear reactors at distances of tens of kilometers or more.  

The totalizing secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was potentially incompatible with American science and democracy, and always contested.

The sites of nuclear weapons tests, reactors and uranium mining are marked by disenfranchisement individuals and communities of color of those lands.

Nuclear energy policy debates in countries possessing or pursuing nuclear arms or military nuclear propulsion often conceal interdependencies between civil and military nuclear infrastructures.

Simulations of nuclear exchanges involving a U.S. arsenal with and without Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles question whether such ICBMs are necessary for deterrence.

The US, France, Britain, China, and Russia have dismissed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons while also trying to block it and pressuring allies and partners to oppose it as way to counter a norm against possessing nuclear weapons.

French nuclear weapons tests in Polynesia harmed the environment and the health of local people and of French veterans and these consequences need to be acknowledged and addressed.

Nuclear weapons can be seen as part of a continuum of violence along with systems of militarism, racism, and patriarchy that manifest as contemporary structures of white supremacy, the carceral system, and border imperialism among others.

Can the new generation of commercial imaging satellites offer new possibilities for nonproliferation and disarmament monitoring and how well can new US military satellites track hypersonic missiles?

The French president in 2020 proposed that France’s nuclear arsenal serve as the basis for a European collective nuclear force. His case for a European nuclear force goes back half a century and continues to reappear, like a zombie that can never be finally put to rest.

Most thinking about space reflects geographic misperceptions, slanted geopolitics, misleading analogies and utopian anticipations. Actual space activities have increased the likelihood of nuclear war and amplified global closure and vulnerability. Further expansion should be limited.

This seminar, based on a new book, will explore the conflicts between Iran and its Persian Gulf neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia, and offer a roadmap to overcoming this challenge to regional and world peace through a new collective regional security and cooperation framework.

Along with nuclear weapons, the United States and Soviet Union pursued radiological weapons during the 1940s and 1950s. The talk will explore how these programs emerged, what they reveal about military innovation in both the US and USSR, and how the weapons were abandoned.

Advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, cyberspace, remote sensing, and electronics are being put to military use before society understands the risks and can control this weaponization. This talk will offer a framework for restricting the military use of these technologies.

The entry into force on 22 January 2021 of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is a dramatic step forward. Prohibition is but a stepping stone to phased and verified nuclear disarmament, alone capable of realizing the vision of a world freed from the menace of nuclear weapons.

With the election of Joe Biden as President, it is possible to save the 2010 New START Treaty and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and to make progress on other nuclear policy reforms. But too narrow a focus on immediate threats and incremental gains may be a distraction from changing nuclear policy in a more holistic way.

The nuclear weapons field is often portrayed as one of the most gendered areas of international security and particularly hostile for women, who are seen as underrepresented in the field and potentially able to bring qualitative change to the policy space.

This talk, based on a forthcoming personal account, will offer reflections by the president of the diplomatic conference convened under the auspices of the United Nations on the process of negotiating and adopting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, fulfilling an aspiration as old as the United Nations.

This talk seeks to explain the role of U.S. satellite-imaging technology innovation in domestic and international politics during arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

In a major new book, Gambling With Armageddon, Martin Sherwin revisits the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which many consider to have been the closest the US and USSR came to nuclear war during the Cold War. In this talk, Sherwin challenges traditional narratives of the crisis by drawing attention to the role of technology and luck in creating and preventing a catastrophe.

As part of the Nuclear Princeton project, Native-American undergraduate students affiliated with the student groups, Natives at Princeton, and Native Nations in the United States, investigate the impacts of the nuclear age on Native Nations in the United States and Princeton’s role in helping shape this age.

This talk will focus on how lawmakers obtain the information they need to make decisions about the many policy issues in which science plays a role. By understanding more about the capacity of Congress to access, interpret, and use information on science and technology, we can better understand how to improve its science and technology advisory system.

The talk seeks to convey some of the lessons Dr. Cochran learned during his 40 years of public policy advocacy on issues related to civil nuclear power, nuclear nonproliferation, and nuclear arms control issues.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will enter into force in January 2021 as the first international legal instrument to ban the production, possession, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.

This presentation analyzes a technology's potential to significantly affect stability along three axes: the pace of advances in, and diffusion of, this technology; the technology's implications for deterrence and defense; and the technology's potential for direct impact on crisis decision-making.

This presentation explores when the US has decided to share information on the nuclear weapon safety feature known as Permissive Action Links (PALs) with foreign countries and the importance of the U.S.’s relationships with foreign countries, legal concerns, advances in technology, and the fear of nuclear accidents.

This presentation will focus on the 1978-1979 period when senior U.S. government officials realized how far Islamabad had gone in acquiring gas centrifuge technology and that they could not stop Pakistan from eventually building the bomb.

This talk examines the cultural, artistic, and literary impact of nuclear colonialism in French (occupied) Polynesia through the lens of the songs, paintings, and novels by Mā‘ohi activists.

The capabilities of hypersonic weapons remain uncertain and controversial. Based on a computational model of hypersonic missile flight, this talk examines the performance of this new type of weapons.

A commitment to dismantling systemic racism and becoming antiracist requires openness, willingness to listen and change, and, above all, accountability.

In January 2020, the Bulletin Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock was set at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe.

This presentation will focus on the challenges and outlook for nuclear diplomacy with Tehran and Pyongyang, as seen from Moscow.

This presentation will provide a snapshot of the current state of affairs in finding and developing a nuclear waste disposal facility in Australia.

Adam Higginbotham speaks about his definitive, years-in-the-making account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster; a powerful investigation into how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the twentieth century's greatest disasters.

Examining the properties of current nuclear arsenals, scenarios of nuclear conflict, and calculations of the effects of nuclear explosions.

A photographic study of the land that served as the main testing site for American nuclear devices for four decades

While for some decades since the end of the Cold War debates about nuclear weapons policy receded in the public discourse, the debate has been renewed by a number of controversial steps by the Trump administration as well its challenging long-standing doctrines in the Nuclear Posture Review.

It may seem obvious that the atomic bombs ended World War II. Yet at least four other developments helped persuade Japanese leaders to surrender. Understanding the Japanese side of the story advances us well beyond American-centered analyses.

What can be learned about the nuclear devices designed and tested in North Korea? This talk will review three distinct streams of evidence: seismic and other observational data, insider accounts, and official North Korean statements. Comparing the three streams provides a largely consistent picture.

Looking at nuclear energy diplomacy as a means to build new geopolitical partnerships offers a way to understand the Middle East’s emerging nuclear landscape, proliferation potential, and the implications of nuclear partnership by states in the region with great powers.

Scientists like to proclaim that science knows no borders. Scientific researchers follow the evidence where it leads, their conclusions free of prejudice or ideology. But is that really the case? In Freedom’s Laboratory, Audra J. Wolfe shows how these ideas were tested to their limits in the high-stakes propaganda battles of the Cold War.

Andrew Brown explores how James Chadwick quietly undermined the effort of General Leslie Groves, the head of the U.S. Manhattan Project, to create a post-war American nuclear monopoly.