THE PROLIFERATION GAME PROJECT PLUTONIA AND THE TEACHING OF INTERNATIONAL SAFEGUARDS

The Next Generation Safeguards Initiative has been remarkably successful in bringing International Safeguards courses to a new generation of students. However, with the Cold War long over, typical students born in the middle 1990s and entering these courses do not have an appreciation for the zeitgeist of an era that drove so many arms control and nuclear nonproliferation treaties, including the early test ban treaties and the NPT. This emotional disincentive makes a standard text book approach inadequate. Consequently, the Nuclear Nonproliferation and International Safeguards course taught at the University of Washington begins with an in depth study of the Cuban Missile Crisis resulting in student immersion into a former world steeped in fear of global nuclear war. Once exposed to President Kennedy’s executive committee (ExCom) to deal with that crisis, students move to a modern proliferation game. Project Plutonia postulates the birth of a new country, Plutonia, formed from an ethnic civil war, and finding itself with substantial uranium assets. The Plutonia ExCom, representing newly formed student staffed Ministries of Defense, Foreign Affairs, Science and Technology, Energy, and Economics and Environment must decide, over a sequence of 3 ExCom meetings, whether to join the NPT, whether to join any regional nuclear weapons free zone, whether or how to start a commercial nuclear power enterprise, and whether or how to embark on a nuclear weapons program, covertly or otherwise. Each Ministry must research and report back on the effect that International Safeguards as practiced by the IAEA may have on whatever decisions taken. During ExCom 3, a PNNL subject matter expert plays the role of a USG representative, bringing key information to the final decision process.