April 2015

April 27, 2015January 14, 2019

New Design Approaches for Improving Sustainability of Nuclear Energy

SPEAKER:

PROFESSOR EHUD GREENSPAN

DEPARTMENT OF NUCLEAR ENGINEERING
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

DATE/TIME:

MON, 04/27/2015 - 4:00PM TO 5:00PM

LOCATION:

3105 ETCHEVERRY HALL

Spring 2015 Colloquium Series

Abstract:

Research activities ongoing in the Advanced Reactor Design and Fuel Cycle Analysis Group of UC Berkley will be reviewed. The group research thrust is to improve the sustainability of nuclear energy by increasing the utilization of the uranium and thorium fuel resources, and by minimizing the amount and toxicity of the high level waste, along with improving the economics, safety, and proliferation resistance of nuclear energy. Four innovative design approaches will be briefly described: (1) achieving sustainability using thorium fueled reduced moderation boiling water reactors (RBWR); (2) neutron efficient seed-and-blanket sodium cooled fast reactor cores that benefit from the breed-and-burn (once-through) mode of operation using existing technology and enable new promising fuel cycle options; (3) 3-D fuel shuffling in large breed-and-burn fast reactor cores for doubling their fuel utilization and reducing the radiation damage to the fuel cladding; and (4) an engineered autonomous reactivity control system for improved safety and economics of fast reactors. The presentation will focus on describing the unique features of these concepts and explaining the fundamentals behind the performance improvements they offer.

About the Speaker:

Ehud Greenspan is a Professor of the Graduate School at the Nuclear Engineering Department of UC Berkeley

April 20, 2015January 14, 2019

Security Dilemma in South Asia: Building Arsenals and Living with Distrust

SPEAKER:

BRIGADIER GENERAL FEROZ HASSAN KHAN (R)

NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

DATE/TIME:

MON, 04/20/2015 - 4:00PM TO 5:00PM

LOCATION:

3105 ETCHEVERRY HALL

Spring 2015 Colloquium Series

Abstract:

*Please note that this talk will not be recorded*

India and Pakistan are engaged in a subtle strategic competition and a gradual arms race where technological innovations, military modernizations, and growing nuclear arsenals are raising the stakes for stability. India’s military investment is driven by a strategic rivalry with China, but the pace of development finds Pakistan increasingly vulnerable to exploitation; to reduce the level of disparity, Pakistan turns to China, and though willing and able to bolster Pakistan’s strategic capability, the assistance is not enough to enable Pakistan to meet multiple conventional force contingencies. Islamabad therefore depends even more on nuclear weapons to offset its force imbalance with India. In this classic security dilemma, where competition is intensifying and mutual distrust is swelling, the potential for an outbreak of military crisis in South Asia is increasing. The situation demands a structured peace and security architecture to initiate détente and ensure stability between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. Without such an agreement, the consequences of an unchecked India-Pakistan security competition could reverberate beyond South Asia into the Asia- Pacific and Middle East regions.

About the Speaker:

Feroz Hassan Khan is on the faculty of Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey California where he is professor of security studies and international relations in the Department of National Security Affairs at the where he teaches He is a former Brigadier in the Pakistan Army, with experience in combat action and command on active fronts on the Line of Control in Kashmir and Siachin Glacier and Afghanistan border. He has served on numerous assignments in the United States, Europe, and Asia. He last served as Director Arms Control and Disarmament Affairs, in the Strategic Plans Division, Joint Services Headquarters. Khan had been a key contributor in formulating Pakistan’s security policies on nuclear and conventional arms control and strategic stability in South Asia. He produced recommendations for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and represented Pakistan in several multilateral and bilateral arms control negotiations.

Brigadier Khan holds an M.A. International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), John Hopkins University, Washington DC. He has held a series of visiting fellowships at Stanford University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; the Brookings Institution; Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and at the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Sandia National Laboratory. He also taught courses as a visiting faculty at the Department of the Defense and Strategic Studies, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.

He has widely participated in international and national conferences on strategic issues, international security, terrorism, nuclear arms control and non-proliferation issues. He is the author of Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford University Press, 2012)

April 13, 2015January 14, 2019

Time Correlated Particle Detection for the Assessment of Special Nuclear Material

SPEAKER:

LESLIE F. NAKAE, PH.D.

STAFF PHYSICIST, NUCLEAR AND CHEMICAL SCIENCES DIVISION

LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY

DATE/TIME:

MON, 04/13/2015 - 4:00PM TO 5:00PM

LOCATION:

3105 ETCHEVERRY HALL

Spring 2015 Colloquium Series

Abstract:

The low natural background rates and the penetrating nature of neutron radiation makes neutron detection a good method for quantifying and accounting for large amounts of special nuclear material capable of neutron induced fission and fission chains. Almost from the beginning of the atomic age, the measurement of time-correlated neutrons has been used to detect and quantify fission and fission processes. Richard Feynman himself proposed a method, the grandfather of what is used today, to compare correlation rates of neutron flux in a fixed time window, to that which would be expected from a random neutron source, in order to prove that fission was taking place in early reactor experiments. Fission is one of the few natural processes that produces time-correlated neutrons, the others are spallation-type processes (e.g. (n,xn), cosmic induced background, etc). We will discuss the use of such methods in detection, material accountability, arms control verification and the assessment of unknown objects for nuclear material, topics of particular interest in the world today.

About the Speaker:

Leslie F. Nakae

Current Position:

Staff Physicist, Nuclear and Chemical Sciences Division

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Education:

Ph.D. Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (Elementary Particle Physics, January 1992)

M.S. Stanford University, Stanford, CA (Geophysics, June 1985)

M.S. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (Physics, Dec 1981)

A.B. University of California, Berkeley, CA (Physics and Applied Math, June 1980

Currently PI for numerous projects supporting various programs related to the radiation detection and assessment of Special Nuclear Materials. These programs involve arms control treaty verification and safeguards monitoring as well as nuclear threat assessment. Current projects include development of Detection and Analysis systems employing fast time correlated and spectral analysis of neutrons and gamma rays for Non-Proliferation Verification, Nuclear Safeguards and Nuclear Threat Assessment.

On staff at LLNL from 1994-present, Previous Positions: Computer Systems Analyst, Post Doctoral Researcher (SSC Lab), Radar Systems Analyst, Graduate Student Assistant (LBNL, FNAL).

April 6, 2015January 14, 2019

Doomed to cooperate: How American & Russian nuclear scientists joined forces to mitigate some of the greatest post-Cold War dangers

SPEAKER:

DR. SIEGFRIED S. HECKER

CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND COOPERATION, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

DATE/TIME:

MON, 04/06/2015 - 4:00PM TO 5:00PM

LOCATION:

3105 ETCHEVERRY HALL

Spring 2015 Colloquium Series

Abstract:

Nuclear risks changed dramatically when the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991. Suddenly the world was threatened more by Russia’s weakness than its strength. Never before had a country with the capacity to destroy the world experienced such dramatic political, economic and cultural turmoil. The United States and much of the world was concerned about loose nukes, loose nuclear materials, loose nuclear experts and uncontrolled nuclear exports. I will describe how scientists and engineers at the DOE nuclear laboratories joined forces with those at the Russian nuclear institutes for more than 20 years to avoid what looked like the perfect nuclear storm. I will also reflect on how today’s strained political relations between Washington and Moscow have curtailed that cooperation to the detriment of a safer and more secure world.

About the Speaker:

Siegfried Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, (FSI) at Stanford University. Hecker was the co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) from 2007-2012. He served as the fifth director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986-1997. Hecker received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in metallurgy from Case Western Reserve University. His current professional interests include plutonium research, cooperative nuclear threat reduction with the Russian nuclear complex, global nonproliferation, the expansion of nuclear energy, and threats of nuclear terrorism. He is a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Among other awards, he received the National Academy of Engineering Arthur M. Bueche Award; the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Science Diplomacy, the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the Leo Szilard Prize, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, the Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence Award, and the American Nuclear Society Seaborg Award.