'Nukes in East Asia' workshop at Union College
Prof. Mark Walker organized panel to discuss nukes in Korea, China and Japan
Mark Walker, a Union College professor of history who specializes in the development of nuclear technology, will lead a public workshop on “Nukes in East Asia” on Friday, Sept. 16, from 3 to 5 p.m. in the F.W. Olin Center Auditorium. This event is free and open to the public.
After an introduction by Walker, the workshop will feature six other experts from the U.S., China and Japan with talks on nuclear weapons, nuclear power and nuclear research in the Korean Peninsula, China and Japan.
The workshop is sponsored by Union's East Asian Studies Program with support from the Freeman Foundation.
Due to technological development, nuclear proliferation has become much easier than it was two or three decades ago, Walker said. At the same time, however, “no country thinks it is in their best interest to use them.” Walker added that he is skeptical that state-sponsored terrorist groups would use nuclear weapons because the reprisals to those states would be so severe.
Other speakers include:
— Masakatsu Yamazaki, Tokyo Institute of Technology, “Japanese Wartime Nuclear Weapons Research.”
— Walter Grunden, Bowling Green University, “The Alleged Connection Between Japan's Wartime Nuclear Research and the Postwar Nuclear Weapons Programs in USSR and North Korea.”
— Morris Low, Johns Hopkins University, “”Sinitiro Tomonaga and the Postwar Establishment of the Japanese Institute for Nuclear Study.”
— John Dimoia, Princeton University, “Energy Requirements on the Korean Peninsula as a Prelude to the South Korean Nuclear Program”
— Zuoyue Wang, California State University at Pomona, “American Response to the Chinese Atomic Bomb”
— Zaiqing Fang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, “Chinese Nuclear History”
Walker, a specialist in the development of nuclear technology, is author of Nazi Science, editor of Science and Ideology: A Comparative History and co-editor (with Carola Sachse) of Politics and Science in Wartime. He is to be a featured guest this fall on a PBS' NOVA show on “Hitler's Bomb.”