A faculty member and three students recently led a writing workshop for African nuclear engineers, scientists, and policy makers. Russ Hirst, an associate professor of English, and three students traveled to Accra, Ghana in April at the invitation of the African Centre for Science and International Security (AFRICSIS).

The idea behind the Nuclear Security Summits was to prevent terrorist groups such as the Islamic State from gaining access to nuclear weapons, fissile materials, and nuclear facilities. But nuclear security is never “done”—not as long as fissile and radiological materials exist—so even now, with the summit process complete, the threat of nuclear terrorism is […]

On April 18-22, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies and the African Center for Science and International Security (AFRICSIS) conducted their first joint capacity-building workshop on nuclear security in Africa. The workshop was hosted by AFRICSIS, an independent, science-based non-profit organization established by Hubert Foy, an alumnus of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MAIPS’10), […]

In his oft-cited Prague speech of 2009, Barack Obama announced “a new international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.” The effort’s highest-profile element was a series of Nuclear Security Summits that began in Washington in 2010 and concludes, again in Washington, in 2016. Clearly the initiative hasn’t “secure[d] […]

PARIS — A suspect linked to the Nov. 13 Paris attackers was found with surveillance footage of a high-ranking Belgian nuclear official, the Belgian authorities acknowledged on Thursday, raising fears that the Islamic State is trying to obtain radioactive material for a terrorist attack. The existence of the footage, which the police in Belgium seized […]

Research reactors contribute enormously to our knowledge, prosperity, and well-being.  They train scientists and engineers, advance basic science, test and qualify power reactor fuels, test and create advanced materials, and diagnose and treat disease.

This report summarises the outcome of a Professional Development Course on Introduction to Nuclear Security and Safeguards held by AFRICSIS and CNES at Charleston Hotel Tesano in Accra on 3-7 August and 7-11 December 2015. The course was held to build intellectual capacity and transfer of knowledge, by providing an introduction to the varied principles of nuclear security and safeguards for academic faculty […]

NSSPI Interim Director Dr. Sunil Chirayath participated in the second part of a joint professional development course with the National Nuclear Security Administration’s International Nuclear Safeguards Engagement Program (INSEP), the US Department of State’s Partnership for Nuclear Security (PNS), and the African Center for Science and International Security (AFRICSIS).  The objectives of this course were […]

The sample of highly-enriched uranium, of a type that could be used in a nuclear bomb, arrived here on a rainy summer day four years ago, in a blue shopping bag carried by a former policeman.

The IAEA Board of Governors today approved an agreement with Kazakhstan to establish and operate in Kazakhstan the IAEA Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) Bank, which will host a reserve of LEU as an assurance of supply mechanism for Member States in case they cannot obtain LEU on the global commercial market, through State-to-State arrangements, or […]