Events Archives - Partnership for Global Security

US-Korea Civil Nuclear Partnership: Implications for Energy, Geopolitics, and Nonproliferation

Grecia Cosio — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 20:54:26 +0000

Last week, the Partnership for Global Security, the Global America Business Institute and Hudson Institute hosted a conference on the U.S. - Korea civil nuclear relationship, which has long been a cornerstone of international nuclear cooperation and a vital alliance supporting the nuclear safety, security, and nonproliferation regimes.

The future of this partnership has far-reaching international impacts on: international nuclear markets; the development and deployment of next-generation nuclear technologies; the maintenance of geopolitical influence in key regions; maintaining robust international nuclear standards and practices; and broadening access to clean, and also reliable electricity in a world facing both rapid energy demand growth and increasing environmental and climate pressures.

Speakers Bio:

Dr. Il Soon Hwang

Is a professor in the School of Energy Systems Engineering at Seoul National University. Previously, he led Korean implementation of the IAEA Periodic Safety Review (PSR) and the development of the advanced nuclear waste partitioning and transmutation technology, known as PEACER-Pyro Green, while serving as the director of the Nuclear Transmutation Energy Research Center of Korea and as a member of the Korea National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Hwang chairs or co-chairs the IAEA Advanced Partitioning Expert Group, OECD-NEA Task Force on Lead-alloy Collant Technology and the Forum on Climate Change and Energy Policy, the Nuclear Power Infrastructure Development Seminar (NUPID), and finally the Summit of Honor on Atoms for Peace and Environment (SHAPE).

Dr. Hwang is a nuclear energy specialist with expertise in nuclear plant integrity and nuclear waste transmutation. He received his B.S. from Seoul National University and his PH.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Dr. Eunjung Lim

Is an Assistant Professor at the College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University. Her areas of specialization include international cooperation, comparative and global governance, and energy security policies of East Asian countries. Specifically, she has been working on nuclear issues in East Asian countries.

Before joining the Ritsumeikan faculty, Dr. Lim taught at Johns Hopkins University SAIS (2013-2017). Dr. Lim also taught at several universities in Korea, including Yonsei University and Korea University. She has also been a researcher and visiting fellow at several institutions, including the Center for Contemporary Korean Studies at Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo, the Institute of Japanese Studies at Seoul University, the Institute of Japan Studies at Kookmin University, and the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan.

She earned a B.A. from the University of Tokyo. Later, she earned her M.I.A. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from SAIS John Hopkins University. She is fluent in Korea, Japanese, and English.

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REGAINING AMERICA’S PLACE IN A THRIVING GLOBAL NUCLEAR MARKET

Grecia Cosio — Wed, 23 May 2018 18:43:43 +0000

On May 23, PGS President Ken Luongo moderated NEI's 2018 Nuclear Energy Assembly "Regaining America's Place in a Thriving Global Nuclear Market" session in Atlanta, Georgia. Ambassador Laura S. H. Holgate, Vice President for Materials Risk Management at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and Robert F. Ichord, Jr., Nonresident Senior Fellow for the Atlantic Council's Global Energy Center, formed part of the panel.

Some key highlights of the session include:

America’s role in the nuclear marketplace as an important foreign, domestic, and economic policy issue; and
Strong linkage between nuclear power, carbon reduction, and global security, which affects the existing nuclear fleet, new LWRs, and the next generation of smaller and advanced reactors.

Photo Credit: NEI

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Comments to the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense: “Transnational Biological Threats and Global Security”

Grecia Cosio — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 18:27:01 +0000

Comments to the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense

Kenneth Luongo
President, Partnership for Global Security

Hudson Institute, Washington D.C.
April 25, 2018

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Chairmen Lieberman and Ridge and distinguished members of the panel, thank you for the invitation to provide comments to you on Transnational Biological Threats and Global Security.

I agree completely with the first sentence of the Preface of your October 2015 report – “The United States is underprepared for biological threats.” Despite your excellent analysis and recommendations we remain underprepared while some of the dangers and challenges have continued to develop and grow in intensity.

I am going to focus my remarks on four key issues:

Infectious Disease and Pandemics
Emerging Technologies
International Threat Reduction
International Institutions

Infectious Disease and Pandemics

Infectious disease and pandemics are the clearest and most immediate danger we face from biological threats. Yet, this challenge is primarily treated as a medical issue not a global security issue. And, within the medical community it is not at all clear that we are ready to effectively deal with the consequences of a severe infectious disease outbreak or pandemic.

Just earlier this year we saw some hospitals where severe flu had taken hold stretched to their limit. In Rhode Island, hospitals diverted ambulances because they were flooded with patients. In San Diego, one hospital erected tents outside the emergency room to manage flu patients. And, this is an infectious disease that the country prepares for every year.

What does this anecdotal evidence tell us about the preparedness to effectively manage another bout of bird flu or swine flu? Or emerging pathogens for which few, or no, medical countermeasures exist - the WHO includes in this list Ebola, MERS, and SARS among others.

There are several contributing factors to this situation. One is the increasing urbanization of the global population and the stresses that a potential outbreak would place on urban hospitals.

Another is the decline in anti-viral and antibiotic research and development. The U.S. launched a National Action Plan for Combatting Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in 2015. This included the creation of a biopharmaceutical incubator to promote innovation and increase the number of antibiotics in the drug-development pipeline. But, it has a hazy timeline, and in the meantime, no new class of antibiotics has been discovered since 1987. Antibiotic resistant diseases are growing. It is estimated that the global death toll from drug-resistant infections is several hundred thousand people annually. That could reach into the millions by mid-century. This is primarily impacting developing countries, but it could spread.

Third, there needs to be better and more focused attention on modelling the potential for the spread of disease. While some work on this is being done and contemplated inside governments, it is not very effective or comprehensive at the moment.

Finally, today, almost 75 percent of all new, emerging, or re-emerging diseases are zoonotic in origin. In our highly interconnected world, infectious diseases can spread quickly and far in a short period of time. The SARS, H5N1 avian influenza outbreak, and the H1N1 influenza pandemic are clear examples of how dangerous diseases can quickly spread and create serious response challenges.

Emerging Technologies

Compounding the infectious disease challenge is the rapid advance in technology.

Advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology and related disciplines pose a significant dilemma. They promise benefits for human health yet can be misused for hostile purposes.

The field of synthetic biology, in particular, offers a number of challenges. It combines chemical synthesis of DNA with genomics to enable the rapid manufacture of DNA sequences or the assembly of them into new genomes. From a risk perspective, the ability exists to create new biological systems and organisms that can be used for malicious purposes, including defeating existing immune defense mechanisms.

Much of this field in democratic countries is managed by the private sector and in authoritarian nations by the government. But, in both areas, here is little transparency in synthetic biology. This raises questions about what is going on in the laboratory and how governments with control over the technology may be managing it – and for what ends.

Major biotech countries including the U.S. and those in the E.U. have national frameworks and legal requirements governing biosafety and biosecurity. However, the governance of activities in other major biotech countries, like China and Russia, are more opaque.

There also are few global rules governing synthetic biology activities. The Biological Weapons Convention bans biological weapons, but has no enforcement mechanism. The Australia Group is an informal association of over 40 nations that formed a synthetic biology advisory body in 2008.

There is a synthetic biology Code of Conduct that outlines best practices. It was driven by concerns that genetic technologies could be used for bioterrorism or as a biological warfare agent. While adherence is voluntary, a value of the Code is that it requires gene synthesis providers to screen genetic sequences ordered by customers against a database of known pathogenicity or virulence factors and to screen clients to determine their legitimacy.

While the governance process seeks to catch up with the rapid trajectory of biotechnology, the industry is undergoing additional changes. Biotech is being significantly impacted by digital advances including data processing and artificial intelligence, and by nanotechnology. In the U.S., the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking at how synthetic biology can lead to advanced nanotechnology through a program called “Living Foundries.”

The goal is to standardize and streamline genetic engineering so that it can more easily and cheaply provide new materials, capabilities, fuels and medicines - in a Lego-like fashion that can create biological mini-machines. While this may benefit the bio-products needs of the U.S. military, it may also be replicated by hostile nations.

As long as biosecurity regulation and oversight remain national and globally uneven, the world will face greater bio-vulnerability. As life science continues to advance, more transparency and oversight will become more important.

International Threat Reduction

One way that the U.S. and its allies have attempted to increase the transparency and insight into biological activities in locations of concern has been through its threat reduction efforts. There are several efforts, including in the Departments of Defense and State, some of which have their origins in the ground-breaking Nunn-Lugar program. But those programs have changed missions over the years as collaboration in Russia and the FSU shut down and other opportunities opened up.

DoD’s Cooperative Biological Engagement program is focused on addressing global health security threats by working with partner nations to improve biosafety, biosecurity, and support disease surveillance for traditional select agents and emerging pathogens. State is involved with the Australia Group, the BWC, and has supported U.S. efforts to curb the Ebola epidemic.

In 2014, the Global Health Security Agenda was launched as an international partnership with governments, international organizations and non-governmental organization. The goals was to strengthen the barriers against infectious disease and elevate global health security as a priority issue. The U.S. and a number of its European and Asian allies are members as is China. But Russia is not a member.

These efforts are all worthwhile and important but they have left many dark corners of the bio world unlit. It then falls to the intelligence community to determine what activities are occurring in key countries like Russia, Syria and North Korea. But, bio laboratories are small and difficult to monitor remotely and there is little of the large infrastructure, equipment, and signatures that are associated with a nuclear program for example. And, historically, the amount of intelligence community person-power that has been devoted to bio threats has been small.

There also are challenges posed by non-state actors including terrorists. State supplied bio-weapons to terrorists is one pathway of concern. But, there is a growing DIYbio community that has developed that includes hobbyists and after-hours professionals. This is a highly dispersed community that is essentially unregulated. The threat spectrum in this area includes accidental exposure, deliberate exposure, and dissemination of information. The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity made some useful recommendations for how to manage the DIY phenomenon in 2011. However, terrorists have become more brutal and are better resourced than in the past. Western intelligence agencies have stated that the Islamic State has been trying to develop biological weapons at its bases in Iraq and Syria. Syria, itself is suspected of maintaining a biological weapon program and in explaining the most recent attack on Syrian facilities, senior Pentagon leaders noted that one of the targeted scientific facilities was engaged in biological research. Given these comments, the unbridled use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, the covert effort to construct a nuclear reactor, and their close relationship with North Korea, we should be very wary of, and alert to, any potential bio weapons activities in Syria.

Further, the Department of Homeland Security must remain vigilant about the potential for a potential bio attack on the U.S. through its BioWatch program and other activities.

But, overall, it is clear that given the myriad international challenges that the U.S. government has to deal with on a daily basis and the lack of a bio-weapons attack by terrorists, we have lowered the priority of this threat in the country. That is a mistake.

International Institutions and Governance

As the Panel has made clear in its earlier report, the U.S. government desperately needs to get better organized on addressing and preventing the bio threat than it has been able to do so far.

But, the report also made the same point about the international community. It said, “Global prevention and response capability will not come from the WHO; it must come from nations that agree to make it a priority.” There were then recommendations for private-public partnerships that could improve the international response to a large-scale outbreak.

Beyond, the logistics, there is also a lack of harmonized and globalized regulatory and governance system. And, a disjointed reporting and surveillance system for infectious disease hot spots. Also, the International Health Regulations remain voluntary with inadequate funding for broad implementation.

In my work in nuclear, bio, and other transnational security areas I have found that the challenges in the bio area are similar to those in other areas. The disconnect between governments and the private sector stakeholders; the inability to coordinate effectively by breaking through silos rather than building them higher; and the cross cutting nature of the challenge – affecting the economy, security, health, and human well-being – are elements present in all of these transnational security areas.

My recommendation is that we should work through the challenges in each area while also working to find a model that can be applied across them all.

Thank you.

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TRANSNATIONAL BIOLOGICAL THREATS AND GLOBAL SECURITY

Grecia Cosio — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 13:35:41 +0000

On April 25, 2018, the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense invited PGS President, Mr. Ken Luongo, to provide his comments and recommendations on "Transnational Biological Threats and Global Security."

In his remarks, Mr. Luongo indicated that infectious diseases and pandemics are the most immediate danger we continue to face from biological threats. Unfortunately, these are not treated as a global security issue nor effectively addressed due to the increasing urbanization of the global population and ability of infectious diseases to become widespread in a short period of time; the need for better disease modeling; and, the decline of anti-viral and antibiotic R&D.

Advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology and related disciplines also pose a significant dilemma, promising benefits for human health while potentially being misused for hostile purposes. Much of this field in democratic countries is managed by the private sector, or by the government in authoritarian nations. But, in both areas, there is little transparency, raising questions about how government manages the technology.

Mr. Luongo further said that as long as biosecurity regulation and oversight remain national and globally uneven, the world will face greater bio-vulnerability.

But the challenges in this area are similar to those in other areas with the disconnection between governments and the private sector stakeholders; the inability to coordinate effectively by breaking through silos rather than building them higher; and the cross-cutting nature that affects the economy, security, health, and human well-being.

Mr. Luongo's recommended we work through the challenges in each area while also finding a model that can be applied across all of the transnational security areas.

Read his full remarks here.

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NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY, ENERGY POLICY AND GEOPOLITICS

Grecia Cosio — Wed, 21 Mar 2018 18:35:19 +0000

On March 21, PGS co-hosted the public event "Nuclear Diplomacy, Energy Policy and Geopolitics" with the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins SAIS, 38th North, the Korea Nuclear Policy Society, and the Korean Nuclear Society in Seoul, South Korea.

In the first session, Ms. Jenny Town, Mr. Frank Aum, Colonel William McKinney and Dr. Bong-Geun Jun spoke on "Options for Addressing North Korea and Its WMD Programs". In the second session, Mr. Ken Luongo, Dr. Anita Nilsson and Dr. Il Soon Hwang spoke on "Nuclear Geopolitics: The Roles of South Korea and the United States in the Expansion and Governance of Global Nuclear Energy".

In Mr. Luongo's point of view, there are two very important issues. One is understanding the big picture of nuclear power policy and non-proliferation in the 21st Century. Second, the evaluation framework for the role of nuclear power has not been adequately updated and is out of step with modern realities. These new realities include the demands posed by global climate change and low carbon energy needs; threats posed by disruptive emerging technologies and non-state actors that require an improvement in nuclear governance; geopolitical challenges, including state-sponsored nuclear exporters; inexperienced newcomer nuclear nations in dangerous neighborhoods; regulatory systems that have not adequately evolved; and the elimination of electricity inequality as power and reliability demands grow around the globe. As a result, Mr. Luongo believes that new policies and partnership are needed.

THE GLOBAL NUCLEAR MARKET: COMPETITION, STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR NATIONAL SECURITY

Grecia Cosio — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 15:47:57 +0000

The Foundation for Nuclear Studies (FNS) and the Global America Business Institute (GABI) hosted a Capitol Hill briefing on the global nuclear market on January 24, 2018. The panel included (from left to right): Kenneth Luongo, President of the Partnership for Global Security; former U.S. to the IAEA Amb. Laura Holgate; Jeffrey Crater, President and CEO of the Edmondson Hopkins Group, LLC; and, Dr. Everett Redmond, Senior Technical Advisor for New Reactor and Advanced Technology at the Nuclear Energy Institute.

In his remarks, Mr. Luongo describes how the context for evaluating the contributions and value of nuclear power has not been adequately updated to the modern realities of the 21st Century. This modern and new realities include the demands posed by global climate change and low carbon energy needs; threats posed by disruptive emerging technologies and non-state actors; the geopolitical challenges created by Russia and China's desire to dominate the international civil nuclear market; unexperienced newcomer nuclear nations in dangerous neighborhoods; inadequately evolved regulatory systems; elimination of electricity inequality; and, the potential for geoengineering without international control. To effectively operate in this new environment, Mr. Luongo indicates that it will require: 1) new policies; 2) new partnerships; and, 3) the recognition of new realities.

Read Mr. Luongo's remarks here.

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NUCLEAR ENERGY AND NUCLEAR POWER IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Grecia Cosio — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 17:08:45 +0000

The Center for the National Interest and the Energy Innovation Reform Project jointly hosted a panel discussion entitled “Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Power in the 21st Century.” Speakers included Amb. Laura Holgate, former U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA; Kenneth N. Luongo, President of the Partnership for Global Security; Jack Spencer, Vice-President of the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity; and Tristan Volpe, Nonresident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A summary of the event can be found here.

In his remarks, Mr. Luongo speaks about three key areas surrounding nuclear power in the 21st Century - Nuclear Security, Governance, and Geopolitics – and offers some ideas for guiding the next generation of nuclear power. Read more here.

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THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR POWER: TECHNOLOGY, SECURITY, AND GEOPOLITICS

Grecia Cosio — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 12:00:04 +0000

Hosted by the Global American Business Institute (GABI), this workshop held a comprehensive discussion on the safe and secure expansion of nuclear power in order to make progress in reducing the environmental impact of energy generation through speakers Kenneth Luongo, President of Partnership for Global Security, and Dr. Everett Redmond, Senior Technical Advisor for New Reactor and Advanced Technology at the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Achieving progress towards decarbonizing and reducing the environmental impact of energy generation is arguably impossible without a significant expansion of nuclear power internationally. However, improving and strengthening the global nuclear governance system and maintaining high international standards in nuclear safety, security, and nonproliferation are essential for nuclear power to become a more integral part of the world’s energy portfolio. Current developments in the global nuclear market–including growing interest in nuclear power in developing regions and mounting challenges for nuclear energy in liberal democratic states–add complexity to the challenge of ensuring the safe and secure use of nuclear worldwide and addressing the issue of carbon and atmospheric emissions. Developing creative solutions, including novel multilateral arrangements and public-private partnerships, will likely be critical to solving these myriad issues comprehensively.

Read Mr. Luongo's remarks here.

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