Arms Control Specialist Talks About the Dangers of Nuclear Weapons Nov. 22

November 8, 2004

Dr. Sidney Drell, an arms control specialist with deep practical and theoretical knowledge, speaks at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 22, in Jepson Hall Room 118 on The Gravest Danger—Nuclear Weapons and Their Proliferation.

Scientists need to play a bigger role in national security, says Drell, a founding member of JASON -- a group of academic scientists who consult for the government on issues of national importance.

Scientists like Drell, sometimes called civic scientists, are aware of the public's lack of knowledge about science. Without scientific understanding, citizens fear what they don't understand. The media also legitimizes erroneous pseudoscience. Therefore, the government implements wrongheaded and even dangerous policies.

The Jepson School is co-sponsoring this talk with the World Affairs Council of Greater Richmond.

Drell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of theoretical physics (emeritus) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Stanford University. Drell is a theoretical physicist and arms control specialist. He has been active as an adviser to the executive and legislative branches of government on national security and defense technical issues. He acts as a consultant to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

The Threat Today

In his presentation on Monday, Nov. 22, Dr. Drell is expected to discuss international hot spots and danger zones and recommend roles for the United States to minimize the threats posed by nuclear weapons.

North Korea threatens to develop nuclear weapons within the coming year and, if the United States and the outer world do not provide economic assistance and security guarantees, to double its warhead production. Iran denies that it is developing nuclear arms but, despite an oil-rich economy, has launched a nuclear power production program whose technology will yield massive quantities of highly-enriched, weapons-grade nuclear fuel. Brazil is developing an enrichment program also and refuses to submit to full-scale International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. It has been less than a decade since India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Russia cooperates with the United States in the destruction of some Soviet-era weapons but cannot adequately safeguard weapons or weapons components.

Continuing massive U.S. and Russian nuclear deterrents require Russia continually to transport warheads along unguarded rail-lines in an era of increasing terrorism—at a time when many radical groups and individuals willingly contemplate their own and countless other deaths.

Drell is expected to explore the dark prospects posed by these world events from the vantage point of a lifetime of specialized and academic experience.

About Dr. Drell

Drell received his bachelor's degree in 1946 from Princeton University and his master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1947 and 1949, respectively. After joining the physics faculty at Stanford University in 1956, Drell transferred to SLAC when it was created in 1963. He helped establish Stanford's Center for International Security and Arms Control and served as its co-director, 1983–89.

A member of the American Academy of Sciences, he has been a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and President of the American Physical Society. Dr. Drell has served on the Non-Proliferation Advisory Panel and the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He has published numerous works on scientific and arms-control subjects. His 1983 Danz Lectures at the University of Washington were published under the title "Facing the Threat of Nuclear Weapons" (revised and reissued in 1989). In 1993, a collection of his writings and congressional testimony was published in its Masters of Modern Physics series by the American Institute of Physics under the title "In the Shadow of the Bomb: Physics and Arms Control." Also in 1993 the Council on Foreign Relations published "Reducing Nuclear Danger," which Drell coauthored with McGeorge Bundy and William J. Crowe Jr.

Drell collaborated with Hoover senior fellow Abraham Sofaer on a major conference on biological and chemical weapons in 1998. They edited a volume based on the conference proceedings, "The New Terror: Facing the Threat of Biological and Chemical Weapons" (Hoover Press, 1999). In 2003 Hoover Press published his most recent book The Gravest Danger: Nuclear Weapons, co-authored with James Goodby

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