Citizen Scientist: Frank von Hippel’s Adventures in Nuclear Arms Control

Abstract

ABSTRACT This section covers von Hippel’s first engagement with nuclear-weapons issues, starting with a review of a US Secretary of Defense’s claim that a Soviet nuclear first strike on US nuclear weapons would kill only 15,000–25,000 people, through his efforts to revive the proposal for a treaty to ban the production of more plutonium and highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, and ending with the beginning of a collaboration with a group of Gorbachev’s advisors to end the Cold War. It also includes his and his colleagues’ engagement in the successful effort to end the US government’s promotion of of a nuclear weapons material, plutonium, as a nuclear fuel, and a failed effort to require the doubling of the average fuel efficiency of US automobiles.