The virtual seminar will be held from 12:30 - 2:00 p.m. ET.
Between 1993 and 2013 the Megatons-to-Megawatts deal enabled 500 tons of Russian weapon-grade highly enriched uranium, sufficient for over 20,000 nuclear weapons, to be diluted and used as fuel in US commercial nuclear power reactors. This talk will address the origins of the deal and the challenges over four U.S. presidential administrations of managing the clash of diplomatic, institutional, domestic and commercial policies and interests.
About the speaker: Jeff Hughes was in the State Department when the HEU Deal was first advocated and participated in many aspects of the Deal as an advisor to several Cabinet or senior officials at the Department of Energy, in key NSC meetings, and in drafting of memos and negotiating agreements with Russia and commercial parties in the 1990s and 2000s. He worked at the White House National Security Council under President Reagan and President Obama and also worked for Sandia National Laboratories. He is the author of the monograph “The Biggest Single Step: The Deal Eliminating Over 20,000 Atomic Bombs of Fuel.”