EPS 145Q: Nuclear Issues: Energy, Weapons and the Environment
General Education Requirements
Course Description
The advances of nuclear science and technology are closely tied to the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. This seminar reviews basic concepts of nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry and then describes the history of the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. For nuclear weapons, the course focuses on proliferation and the theory of deterrence. We will use case studies to understand the nuclear threats from Russia, China and North Korea. For nuclear energy, the course focuses on power production, nuclear fuel cycles, the cost of nuclear power plants, nuclear accidents (Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi) and nuclear waste management and disposal.
Finally, the students will examine the impact of nuclear power, as an energy source that has very low levels of greenhouse gas emissions, on global climate change. Each student will complete an individual research project/paper and make a presentation that will be focused on an aspect of the energy, nuclear weapons and climate change nexus.
Meet the Instructor: Rodney Ewing
“I am the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. I have written extensively on issues related to nuclear waste and am a co-editor of Radioactive Waste Forms for the Future (1988) and Uncertainty Underground – Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste (2006). I have been a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Each year the Science and Security Board sets the Doomsday Clock. In 2012, I was appointed by President Obama to chair the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which provides scientific and technical reviews of the U.S. Department of the Energy’s programs for the management and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. I stepped down in 2017.”
