A Luncheon Briefing featured presentations by Nonproliferation Review authors (and 2011 Doreen and Jim McElvany Challenge winners) John Krige and Lyndon Burford was held on June 21, 2012 in Washington, DC.
John Krige
Kranzberg Professor, School of History, Technology, and Society, Georgia Institute of Technology
Contrary to received wisdom, there was a lively debate in the spring of 1968, much of it restricted to behind-the-scenes exchanges between Washington and London, over the proliferation risks of gas centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment. The United States put its faith in classification, safeguards, and peaceful use. The United Kingdom feared that clandestine enrichment using centrifuges would render the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons a dead letter.
Watch John Krige’s Presentation
Lyndon Burford
Ph.D. candidate in political studies, University of Auckland, New Zealand
“No Such Thing as a Free Lunch: A Nuclear-User-Pays Model of International Security“
The funding of international nuclear risk mitigation is ad hoc, voluntary, and unpredictable, offering no transparent explanation of who is financially responsible for the task or why. Among many non-nucleararmed states, this exacerbates a sense of injustice surrounding what they see as a discriminatory nuclear regime. The resulting erosion of the regime’s legitimacy undermines support for efforts to prevent nuclear weapons dissemination and terrorism. A transparent, equitable “nuclear-user-pays” system—with states contributing financially to international efforts to mitigate nuclear risks at a level relative to the degree of nuclear risks they create—is a logical means of reversing this trend.
Watch Lyndon Burford’s Presentation
Watch the Q&A Session
Their articles are available in the July 2012 • Volume 19.2 issue of The Nonproliferation Review.
