Word: nuclear
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...career. On March 30, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider smashed together two proton beams. Each was moving with an energy equivalent to 3.5 trillion electron volts, for a combined 7 trillion--a new world-record energy level. The victory was a long time coming for CERN, Europe's nuclear-research group, which for 15 years has pumped $10 billion into the setback-plagued project. The experiments are expected to reveal much about the nature of the universe, including other dimensions, dark matter and the Higgs boson, the particle that could explain how energy from the Big Bang turned into...
...That may be true, and hawks and doves in Washington agree there's little downside to the summit itself. But even the most idealistic internationalists know that the number of nuclear-armed states is likely to grow rather than shrink in coming years, weakening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and increasing the production of dangerous materials around the globe. So, a more accurate definition of the summit's purpose may be that it is, at best, a small step toward slowing the decline of international cooperation on nuclear issues. (See "Obama's Nuclear Strategy: What's Different...
...gathering will produce more paper than progress, Administration officials concede. There will be the nonbinding communiqué, wherein the leaders will declare the dangers of nuclear proliferation. They will pledge to take new national and international measures to secure nuclear materials within four years. The summit will produce a "work plan" of steps that individual states will take to secure their nuclear materials; that too will be nonbinding. And individual countries will announce their own measures, to the extent that they want to do more...
...Such limited achievements are not without value. Since 2004, U.S. leaders of all stripes have agreed that the greatest threat to American security is the possibility of terrorists acquiring a nuclear weapon. The only plausible way that could happen is if a group could steal or buy uranium or plutonium from an existing store, and there are many poorly guarded stocks of uranium and plutonium around the world...
...Even the most hawkish members of the previous Administration support promoting cooperation to keep nuclear materials safe. The Obama Administration says that just getting so many heads of state to sit down and discuss the issue is an achievement. "The fact that almost 50 countries are coming to Washington, most heads of state, heads of government level, is indicative of the response that these countries are paying to this very important subject," says Obama's National Security Adviser, General James Jones...