The threat of nuclear disaster resonates in Ukraine. From the outset of the war in Ukraine Russian leaders, including Vladimir Putin, have threatened to use nuclear weapons to deter NATO members from intervening in the war, dramatically ratcheting up the stakes for the war to escalate exponentially. These threats demanded the attention of Western leaders and complicated plans to support Ukraine. Russia has added another dimension to the nuclear threat with unfounded talk of a radioactive dirty bomb usage by Ukrainian forces. The end of the Cold War and the retirement of Chernobyl-style nuclear reactors outside of Russia were supposed to have put such nuclear fears in Europe to rest, but Russia’s war in Ukraine have brought such fears back to life.
In 2011, an international response worked to stabilize the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. This was in stark contrast to Soviet leaders keeping the world in the dark in the initial days after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine. Since Russian forces first entered the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine in March, the world has scrambled to avoid being shut out again and avert another nuclear disaster in Ukraine.
Russia's occupation of the ZNPP is the first time in history that a nuclear plant has been caught in a hot war, but the threat to the ZNPP is just one of the nuclear threats in the war in Ukraine, making preventing nuclear calamity in Ukraine more challenging.
This panel of authorities in diverse areas of nuclear expertise will explore the security, safety, and social implications of Russia's weaponization of the atom in the war in Ukraine and examine what can be done to avert another nuclear disaster.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2022 19:00 (Tokyo)
This event is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS).
Note: All ICAS events are held in English, open to the public, and admission is free unless otherwise noted.
Charles A. Casto is a safety and regulatory professional with over 45 years of experience, including executive, regulatory, technical, and operational roles. Dr. Casto is the recipient of both the US Presidential Distinguished Award (2012) and the US Meritorious Rank Award (2009) and he served at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for 28 years. His international experience as an extreme crisis leader includes having led the integrated US Government and NRC effort in Japan during and after the Fukushima nuclear accident, representing the US Government to the Japanese Prime Minister’s Cabinet.
James E. Platte is an assistant professor with the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth. His research focuses on strategic deterrence, cybersecurity, US extended deterrence, energy security, and strategy in the Indo-Pacific. He also worked on nuclear security with the Department of Energy, Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Nuclear Security Administration. He held research fellowships with the National Bureau of Asian Research, East-West Center, Pacific Forum, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Harvard Kennedy School. He received his PhD in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Mark Hibbs is Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. He has lived in Europe since 1984. His research is focused on international nuclear trade, national nuclear power programs, nuclear verification, and international nuclear governance. Hibbs has assisted the participating governments of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the leading global multilateral nuclear trade control arrangement, and is the author of the Carnegie report The Future of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, published in 2011. In 2012 Hibbs co-authored with James Acton a report on Why Fukushima Was Preventable. In 2014 Hibbs authored a study on Turkey’s policies concerning the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the NSG, as part of a project called Turkey’s Nuclear Future. Since 2012, Hibbs has led a project at Carnegie supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation concerning decision making in China’s nuclear energy program. In 2018 Hibbs published the final report from this project as a book: The Future of Nuclear Power in China; the Mandarin-language version of this report was published in China in 2019.
Azby Brown is a widely published authority on Japanese architecture, design, and environment. Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, he has been a core member of Safecast, a global volunteer-based citizen-science organization devoted to developing new technology platforms for crowdsourced environmental monitoring that promote open-source and open-data principles. He is Safecast’s lead researcher, closely involved with assisting affected communities and analyzing and reporting the issues they face. In addition, he is involved in the group’s day-to-day operations, including education and outreach, and represents Safecast at international academic conferences and expert meetings. A native of New Orleans, he has lived in Japan since 1985.