Despite the financial meltdown, despite the ongoing war in Iraq, despite impending global warming and the energy crisis, the most important issue facing the next president will be nuclear weapons and the increasing chance of a catastrophe worse than Hiroshima.
Panelists Raymond Jeanloz, George Shultz, Joseph Cirincione, Harold P. Smith, Jr., and Ivan Oelrich discuss this issue, as well as issues surrounding nuclear energy, and debate what can, and should, be done about it- The Commonwealth Club of California
Bio
Joseph Cirincione
Joseph Cirincione is President of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. He has served as Vice President at the Center for American Progress and Director for Nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
He is the author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons and Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats. He teaches at the graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Cirincione worked for nine years in the U.S. House of Representatives on the professional staff of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Government Operations. He is the author of hundreds of articles on nuclear weapons issues, the producer of two DVDs, a frequent commentator in the media, and he appeared in the film, Why We Fight.
He has held positions at the Henry L. Stimson Center, the U.S. Information Agency, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Raymond Jeanloz
After completing his Ph. D., Raymond Jeanloz was on the faculty of Harvard University and then moved to UC Berkeley.
In addition to research and teaching, Jeanloz has been an adviser to the University and to the U.S. Government in areas of resources and environment as well as national and international security.
Ivan Oelrich
Ivan Oelrich, Ph.D. is Vice President for Strategic Security programs at the Federation of American Scientists.
His introduction to national security began at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a federally-funded research and development center supporting the Office of the Secretary of Defense with studies and analyses, where he evaluated new technologies for defense applications, and supported the START and INF Treaty negotiations.
Oelrich left IDA for a one-year fellowship at the Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, where he wrote on conventional arms control limits. On his return to Washington, DC, he accepted a position as a senior analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment, an agency of the U.S. Congress where he investigated the needs of the military industrial base and wrote a treatise on friendly fire prompted by experience in the Persian Gulf War.
Returning to IDA, Oelrich focused on environmental restoration of lands belonging to the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy, characterizing the cleanup liability, evaluating innovative cleanup technologies, calculating the economic benefits of environmental laboratory automation and developing administrative procedures for the long term environmental stewardship of military lands. He also provided technical support to the negotiating team of the land mine arms control treaty.
Oelrich focused on emerging nuclear threats at the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency where he supported General Shalikashvili's review of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
He returned to IDA for one year before joining the Federation of American Scientists, where he focuses on issues related to nuclear testing and the testing moratorium, proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials, the structure of future US nuclear forces, and sizing conventional military forces in the post-Cold War world.
Oelrich received his BS from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Princeton University, both in chemistry. He was a pre-doctoral Research Associate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He also conducted research in nuclear physics and taught in the Physics Department of the Technical University of Munich in Germany.
George P. Shultz
George P. Shultz is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
He was sworn in on July 16, 1982, as the sixtieth U.S. Secretary of State and served until January 20, 1989. In January 1989, he rejoined Stanford University as the Jack Steele Parker Professor of International Economics at the Graduate School of Business and a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution.
He is a member of the board of directors of Fremont Group and Accretive Health. He is chairman of the J. P. Morgan Chase International Council and chairman of the Accenture Energy Advisory Board. He is also chairman of the California Governor's Council of Economic Advisors and co-chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger.
He was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, on January 19, 1989. He also received the Seoul Peace Prize (1992), the Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service (2001), and the Reagan Distinguished American Award (2002). He is the recipient of the Elliot Richardson Prize for Excellence and Integrity in Public Service, The James H. Doolittle Award, and the John Witherspoon Medal for Distinguished Statesmanship.
The George Shultz National Foreign Service Training Center in Arlington, Virginia, was dedicated on May 29, 2002.
Dr. Harold Palmer Smith Jr.
Harold Palmer Smith, Jr. holds the appointment of Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Professor with the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley where he focuses on the impact of technology on foreign and defense policy.
In 1993, Dr. Smith accepted an appointment with the Clinton Administration as Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs with responsibilities for reduction and maintenance of the American and NATO arsenals of nuclear weapons, dismantlement of the chemical weapon stockpile, oversight of the chemical and biological defense programs, management of counter-proliferation acquisition, and management of treaties related to strategic weapons.
He was responsible for implementation of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (Nunn Lugar) program, which assists the former Soviet Union in the dismantlement of their weapons of mass destruction and in converting their related industries to commercial production. The Defense Special Weapons Agency and the On Site Inspection Agency reported to him. He returned to private life in 1998.
In 1960, after receiving the PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT, he joined the faculty of UCB where he published extensively on the optimal control of exotic nuclear systems and on the interaction of radiation with surfaces, including ion implantation of silicon.
He retired as professor and chairman of the Department of Applied Science in 1976 in order to pursue his interests in managerial consulting and entrepreneurial ventures. The Palmer Smith Corporation, a consulting firm specializing in management of high technology programs, was established and retained by many of the largest defense contractors. He was one of the early principals of SAIC, RDA-Logicon, and JAYCOR.
Nuclear weapons offer no leverage in dealing with scoundrel leaders in a military sense. America can never drop another atomic bomb except, maybe, in retaliation to one dropped on us.
However, it does have advantages in that other nations want to join the group of nuclear nations. It is ego driven more than a defense. Iran doesn't want nuclear weapons to protect a nuclear attack by Israel, it wants those weapons so that they are on the same psycological playing field. Iran wants to be a grown up nation. It wants to be powerful.
Notice, however, that proving one can be a powerful player is based on destruction, not on construction.
Instead of Iran spending millions of dollars on a space program and placing an Iranian on the Moon, they've chosen destructive power in the creation of nuclear warheads.
Mr Smith
If If? the information laid down for over 60 years of nuclear exploitation is the ground rules of the D.O.E.
This forensic theory could put Israel in danger of
selling nuclear intelligence to the highest bidder.
member. 
