Uganda’s only radiation treatment machine broke down in April earlier this year, provoking widespread public criticism and leaving an estimated 30,000 new cancer patients stranded. Yet the lack of adequate cancer care was hardly unique in the region: 80 percent of Africa’s one billion people have no access to radiotherapy although half of all cancer […]
The African continent faces a plethora of non-conventional and international security threats and risks. They include CBRNe IDFocus on the partnership between AFRICSIS and NRPA terrorism, cyber-attacks, climate change, and nuclear technology proliferation. The zenith of their implications during the last decade have significantly challenged the very concept of national security, stymied economic growth, and […]
From July 18-22, NSSPI Director Dr. Sunil Chirayath traveled to Knoxville, Tennessee to take part in a nuclear safeguards curriculum development workshop for university professors from Nigeria and Ghana at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The workshop was sponsored by the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration’s International Nuclear Safeguards Engagement Program. […]
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] […]
The IAEA will continue to support Nigeria in the introduction of nuclear power, Director General Yukiya Amano told Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari this week. The country plans to have its first nuclear power plant with four 1200 MWe reactors ready by 2035. Mr Amano encouraged the Nigerian authorities to continue the preparation of a comprehensive […]
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 […]
