Resources

Nuclear Power

Preventing Nuclear Weapon Proliferation as Nuclear Power Expands

Siegfried S. Hecker^a1

^a1 Stanford University, USA

Raj et al. describe the promise of nuclear energy as a sustainable, affordable, and carbon-free source available this century on a scale that can help meet the world's growing need for energy and help slow the pace of global climate change. However, the factor of millions gain in energy release from nuclear fssion compared to all conventional energy sources that tap the energy of electrons (Figure 1) has also been used to create explosives of unprecedented lethality and, hence, poses a serious challenge to the expansion of nuclear energy worldwide. Although the end of the cold war has eliminated the threat of annihilating humanity, the likelihood of a devastating nuclear attack has increased as more nations, subnational groups, and terrorists seek to acquire nuclear weapons.

Siegfried S. Hecker can be reached at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Encina Hall, C-220, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; tel. 650–725–6468, and e-mail shecker@stanford.edu.

Hecker is co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a research professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. In addition, Hecker is director emeritus at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Hecker holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in metallurgy from Case Western Reserve University. His research interests include plutonium and actinide science, nuclear weapons, energy, nonproliferation and terrorism, and issues of international security. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of TMS, ASM International, AAAS, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.