Welcome to the website of the Oxford Pugwash group.

The purpose of the Pugwash Conferences is to bring together, from around the world, influential scholars and public figures concerned with reducing the danger of armed conflict and seeking cooperative solutions for global problems. The Oxford Pugwash group aims at raising awarness in Oxford of the issues discussed by the Pugwash conferences.


2010 Science, Ethics and Politics Competition In honour of Nobel Peace Laureate Joseph Rotblat

Term card TT 2010

• Monday 21 June 17:30 The Auditorium, St John : Outcomes of the May 2010 NPT review confrence - What hopes for the goal of 'Global zero' Nuclear weapons'? Film screening and Panel discussion, John Gittings and Elahe Mohtasham (Organised jointly with Peaceroots) More details here .

Past events

All events start at 7:30pm in the Hawkins Room, Merton College.

• Wednesday 5 May: Proliferation resistant Nuclear reactors, Nicolas Delerue

To produce enough power to satisfy the world's energy needs during the coming century new nuclear reactors will have to be built. However recent events in North Korea and Iran have shown that putting Nuclear technology in the wrong hands can leads to significant threat to world peace. In this presentation we will review which parts of the Nuclear fuel cycle are at risk of being misused either by terrorist groups or by governments. We will then discuss how different reactor design address these risks.

• Wednesday 19 May: Timor-Leste (East Timor) in search of JUSTICE - eight years after independence, Zequito de Oliveira
• Wednesday 2 June (tbc): Disarmament for Dummies or ‘Everthing you wanted to know about disarmament but were afraid to ask’., Dan Plesch

Dan Plesch has been involved in successful international disarmament initiatives, including NATO nuclear weapons, land mines and small arms, the arms trade and the NPT. Reflecting on the just concluded NPT negotiations at the UN in New York, he will be outlining SCRAP a comprehensive and rapid approach to world disarmament he has developed. He is the author of the ‘Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace’ and the forthcoming ‘America, Hitler and the UN’. The SCRAP concept can be reviewed at http://www.cisd.soas.ac.uk/index.asp-Q-Page-E-scrap--66814822. He is Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS

Entrance to all events is free and everybody is welcome

Mailing list

To be added to our mailing list, contact Nicolas Delerue nicolas(AT)young-pugwash.org.uk.

Calendar

To import our events calendar in your own calendar or your iPhone click on the following links
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/ucaqlcnr359ll70m5u587ml2g8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=ucaqlcnr359ll70m5u587ml2g8%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe/London

Help Needed

• Committee members: We need volunteers to help run the events next term

Contact

For more details contact Nicolas Delerue nico.pugwash.AT.delerue.org

Links:

• The British Young Student Pugwash Group
• The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
• The British Pugwash Group
• International Student/Young Pugwash
• Online journal of the International Student/Young Pugwash
• Talkworks, Talking about a nuclear free world

Related society in Oxford

• http://domain2065264.sites.fasthosts.com/index.htm Oxford Peace Research Trust
• http://oxfordpeace.blogspot.com/ OxPeace Network for the Studies of Peace

Past events

Term card TT 2009

Wednesday 20 May (week 4, Trinity Term), 19.30:
Can we resolve the Iranian Nuclear Crisis? by Dr Christopher Watson,
(joint event with the Oxford Current Affairs Society , the Oxford University United Nations Association and the PPE Society)
Iran signed the Non-proliferation Treaty in 1974, and since then has had a rather stormy relationship with the international nuclear community. In November 2004, the IAEA reported that Iran had violated the Treaty in at least five respects:

• Uranium conversion: it did not inform the IAEA of its use of the imported uranium to produce uranium metal
• Uranium enrichment: it failed to report that it had used 1.9 kg of imported UF6 to test P1 centrifuges at the Kalaye Electric Company centrifuge workshop in 1999 and 2002.
• Hidden Sites: it did not declare to the IAEA the existence of a pilot enrichment facility at the Kalaye Electric Company Workshop, and laser enrichment plants at the Tehran Nuclear Research Centre and at Lashkar Ab'ad.
• Laser Isotope Enrichment Experiments: it failed to report that in 1993 it imported 50kg of natural uranium metal, and that it used 8 kg of this for atomic vapour laser isotope separation (AVLIS) experiments at Tehran Nuclear Research Centre and Lashkar Ab'ad Plutonium Experiments.
• it did not report to the IAEA that it had irradiated uranium dioxide (UO2) targets in the Tehran Research Reactor, and then separated the plutonium.

Since then there have been an intermittent negotiations aimed at resolving this crisis. The talk will describe these, and discuss possible ways forward at this time.


Wednesday 29 April (week 1, Trinity Term), 19.30:
(joint event with the PPE Society)
Ending War: The Role for Scientists & Citizens by Professor Robert Hinde,
Professor Robert Hinde will speak about 'Ending War: The Role for Scientists & Citizens' and he will show the award-winning film 'Anthropology 101'.

Term card MT 2009

• 15 October - Workshop "The UK as a disarmament laboratory"
• 12 November - Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala, former UN Under-Secretary General and current Pugwash president "The Military-Industrial Complex, the Bottom Billion and the UN".
• 25 November - 19:30 (Hawkins Room, Merton College) - Trident: Economic Constraint? Military Risk? Moral Opportunity? by Professor Henry Shue

The talk will explore the interrelationships among the various types and levels of constraint, risk, and opportunity involved in the possession, possible use, and possible elimination of nuclear weapons by the United Kingdom. It is sometimes argued that a relatively safe route to reduction/elimination of nuclear weapons runs through prior "de-legitimization". This may be especially salient insofar as proliferation decisions are motivated by considerations of status ["seat at the table"]. Could a British choice to reduce/eliminate Trident make a sufficiently significant contribution to "de-legitimization" and thereby to non-proliferation to justify whatever risks it involves?

Term card HT 2010

• Tuesday 26 January, 7:45pm: Joint event with the Oxford Peach Research Trust: Disarmament and development Carol Naughton Pugwash WMD Awareness Programme, 43 St Giles.
• Wednesday 3 February, 7:30pm : Japan as a Peace State, Ra Mason, Sheffield University Hawkins room, Merton College

This presentation will discuss how Japan has gone from aggressor to victim, and now towards becoming a normal international power. This will look at the formation of the Japanese "Peace Constitution", which refuses the right to use military means, the role of Japan's Self Defense Force, and its expansion following the end of the Cold War and post-9/11. The influence of both US pressure and competition between domestic actors (politicians/pressure groups etc.) will be outlined, in terms of explaining the processes and reality of Japan's reconfigured military status, and a theoretical explanation of how this is played out in the international arena will be sketched. Finally, I will introduce my own research project, concerning the recalibration of external risks, and how it relates to the maintenance of peace in North East Asia, and Japan's future national agendas.

• Wednesday 17 February, 7:30pm : The UK plutonium stockpile, Christopher Watson Hawkins room, Merton College

The UK is at a technical and strategic crossroads.
Over the past 50 years it has built up the world’s largest stockpile of separated plutonium, about 100 tons. The UK Government is facing key decisions about what to do with this stockpile, and whether it should continue its policy of separating plutonium.
To help encourage informed debate of this critical issue by policy makers and the public, a working party of British Pugwash recently published a report, “The Management of Separated Plutonium in the UK” which discusses the problem in the context of the current renaissance in civil nuclear power.
The background to this report is that the strategy developed in the 1990s for utilising the UK stockpile of separated plutonium is currently in disarray. There is no immediately practicable policy to use the existing plutonium stockpile. The UK does not have an agreed strategy for correcting its historical mistakes in this area, and the current arrangements for storing the stockpile are vulnerable to various threats (theft or terrorist attack). If other countries followed the UK’s historic practice on plutonium production, the risk of nuclear weapon proliferation would increase. The world does not at present have a sustainable energy strategy which does not involve producing substantial amounts of separated plutonium.
This presentation will discuss possible options for the management of the UK stockpile.

• Postponed: Proliferation safe Nuclear reactors, Nicolas Delerue Hawkins room, Merton College
• Thursday 11 March, 1pm: guided tour of the air base at Upper Heyford Contact us for details.