This person is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment.
Sharon Squassoni was a senior associate in the Nuclear Policy Program and has been analyzing nonproliferation, arms control, and national security issues for two decades. Her research focuses on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear energy.
Squassoni came to Carnegie from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). As a specialist in weapons of mass destruction proliferation, she provided expert analyses and advice on policy and legislation to Members of the United States Congress. Prior to joining CRS, she served for nine years in the executive branch, beginning her government career as a nuclear safeguards expert in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Her last position at the State Department was director of Policy Coordination in the Nonproliferation Bureau.
Squassoni has contributed to journals, magazines, and books on nuclear proliferation and defense. Her most recent publications include: “The Iranian Nuclear Program,” a chapter in Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Future of International Nonproliferation Policy (University of Georgia Press: 2009); “Nuclear Energy: Rebirth or Resuscitation?" Carnegie Report, February 2009; and "The New Disarmament Discussion," Current History, January 2009. She is the recipient of various service awards and a MacArthur fellowship.
Nowhere are nuclear dangers growing more rapidly than in Northeast Asia. Join Carnegie for a discussion, hosted jointly with Nagasaki University, of the most urgent nuclear challenges facing international actors in this increasingly tense region.
Nuclear power is not without risks, both from nuclear waste and the possible proliferation of nuclear fuel for weapons, and its cost and build-out time make it a partial solution, at best, to climate change.
Expectations of a nuclear energy renaissance are particularly high in the United States, but government programs to jump start new reactor construction will likely not be enough to spark more than a handful of reactors by 2015.
Deeper cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty are three highly visible and important steps toward global nuclear disarmament. But more far-reaching efforts are needed to facilitate the hard work of disarmament, which will undoubtedly take decades.
President Obama's decision to scrap the Bush administration's plans for a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic will provide more breathing room for U.S.-Russian strategic arms control negotiations.
The Carnegie Endowment and the Heinrich Boell Foundation hosted a discussion with Juergen Trittin, former German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. Mr. Trittin, who is a leading candidate of the Green Party in the upcoming German elections, offered his views on nonproliferation, disarmament, and nuclear energy.
In just twelve years of existence the Chemical Weapons Convention has succeeded in destroying 43% of the world’s chemical weapons.
All NPT states agreed in 2000 to lay out a practical path toward nuclear disarmament – the 13 Steps. While some steps toward disarmament have been taken, much more needs to be done.
A nuclear renaissance would require significant changes by both governments and multinational agencies as well as aggressive financial support.
Experts discussed whether nuclear power will reemerge as a major energy source both in the U.S. and internationally, and if so, what technical, political, societal, and economic policy changes are required.