Engineering topics
Hund, Gretchen
Publications and source records attributed to Hund, Gretchen.
Engaging Industry in Supporting Self Regulation
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Self Regulation team conducted several activities this year to engage industry. This report lists and provides details about those activities.
Walk the Talk: Progress in Building a Supply Chain Security Culture
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has engaged industry to “go beyond compliance” for over a decade in controlling and securing their supply chains to ensure their goods are not diverted to nuclear weapons programs. This work has focused on dual-use industries that manufacture products that can be used in both commercial applications and in the development of a nuclear weapon. The team encourages industry to self-regulate to reduce proliferation risks. As part of that work, PNNL interviewed numerous companies about their compliance practices to understand their business and to build awareness around best practices to ensure security of goods, technology, and information along their supply chains. From conducting this work, PNNL identified indicators that a company can adopt as part of its commitment to nonproliferation ideals with a focus on supply chain security.
Financial incentives for reducing proliferation risks
This article submitted for publication to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists explains the possible financial incentives for financial institutions and large integrators to reduce nuclear proliferation risks by including anti-proliferation measures in their due diligence and requiring their suppliers to meet heightened compliance standards. Because manufacturers of dual-use nuclear goods are diverse and numerous outreach is difficult. However, financial institutions and large integrators work with nearly all dual-use manufacturers, making financial institutions and integrators well-positioned to increase awareness of proliferation and trafficking risks throughout the nuclear supply chain
Meeting Summary of Kitchen Cabinet on Financial Due Diligence to Reduce Proliferation Risks
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory convened the Kitchen Cabinet (KC) to facilitate a candid discussion about the role of financial institutions (FIs) in antiproliferation efforts to reduce nuclear proliferation risks by identifying suspicious business transactions and exports when making lending or insurance decisions. The meeting brought together a group of export control specialists, largely representatives from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) Participating Governments (PGs) and finance experts representing banks and insurance companies. By assembling a KC of experts, the group could understand what suspicious transactions look like from each other’s perspectives and better inform each of their operations. The goal was to develop red flags FIs could use to identify suspicious proliferation-related transactions and to help governments gain a clearer picture of proliferation using financial information.
A Communications Guide for Sustainable Development: How Interested Parties Become Partners, 2nd Edition
The 2nd edition is an updated version plus an e-book. This book was developed to assist organizations in designing and managing their communication and stakeholder involvement programs. The guidebook describes a step-by-step approach, provides case studies, and presents tools to consider. The book uses a scenario approach to outline changes an organization may confront, and provides a menu of communication and engagement activities that support organizational decision making.
Walk the Talk: How PNNL is developing a Supply Chain Security Culture
For the past decade, a team at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has engaged industry to “go beyond compliance” in controlling and securing their supply chains to ensure their goods are not diverted to nuclear weapons programs. This work has focused on dual-use industries that manufacture products that can be used in both commercial applications and in the development of a nuclear weapon. The team encourages industry to self-regulate to reduce proliferation risks. As part of that work, PNNL interviewed numerous companies about their compliance practices in order to understand their business and to build awareness around best practices to ensure security of goods and information along their supply chains. As a result, PNNL has identified seven indicators that a company can adopt as part of their commitment to nonproliferation ideals.
The Power of Integrators, Financiers, and Insurers to Reduce Proliferation Risks: Nuclear Dual-Use Goods
Globalization of manufacturing supply chains has changed the nature of nuclear proliferation. Before 1991, nonproliferation efforts focused almost exclusively on limiting the spread of materials and equipment specifically designed for nuclear use -- reactors, centrifuges, and fissile material. Dual-use items, those items with both nuclear and non-nuclear applications, were not closely scrutinized or controlled. However, in 1991 the international community discovered that Iraq had developed a fairly sophisticated nuclear weapons program by importing dual-use items; this discovery spurred the international community to increase controls on dual-use technologies. Despite these international efforts, dual-use items are still a challenge for those seeking to limit proliferation.
The Intersection of National Security and Climate Change
On June 4, 2014, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory hosted a groundbreaking symposium in Seattle, Washington, that brought together 36 leaders from federal agencies, state and local governments, NGOs, business, and academia. The participants examined approaches and tools to help decision makers make informed choices about the climate and security risks they face. The following executive summary is based on the day’s discussions and examines the problem of climate change and its impact on national security, the responses to date, and future considerations.
Stopping Illicit Procurement: Lessons from Global Finance
Government regulators and the financial sector cooperate to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. This information-sharing relationship is built upon a strong legislative foundation and effective operational procedures. As with money-laundering and terrorist financing, halting the illicit procurement of dual-use commodities requires close coordination between government and industry. However, many of the legal and operational features present in financial threat cooperation do not exist in the export control realm. This article analyzes the applicability of financial industry cooperative measures to nonproliferation.
Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future: Modeling Social Unrest in Karachi, Pakistan
Social unrest represents a major challenge for policy makers around the globe, as it can quickly escalate from small scale disturbances to highly public protests, riots and even civil war. This research was motivated by a need to understand social instability and to unpack the comments made during a spring 2013 conference hosted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Center for Global Security and the U.S. Institute for Peace, where policymakers noted that models considering social instability are often not suitable for decision-making. This analysis shows that existing state level models of instability could be improved in spatial scale to the city level, even without significantly improved data access. Better data would make this analysis more complete and likely improve the quality of the model. Another challenge with incorporating modeling into decision-making is the need to understand uncertainty in a model. Policy makers are frequently tasked with making decisions without a clear outcome, so characterization of uncertainty is critical. This report describes the work and findings of the project. It took place in three phases: a literature review of social stability research, a “hindsight scan” that looked at historical data, and a “foresight scan” looking at future scenarios.
Summary of FY13 Industry Interviews
The spread of weapons of mass destruction relies on the illicit procurement of dual-use items, and industry plays a critical role in preventing these transfers. Export control systems regulate industry’s sales, but there are additional steps that industry and government can take to stop proliferators. Collectively, these additional steps are known as industry self-regulation. The industry self-regulation project at PNNL has identified several approaches to going “beyond compliance” in recent years, including corporate sustainability, competitive advantages for nonproliferation, and a third party. In FY12 the project team moved from a research phase to an implementation phase, and prepared to seek feedback from industry on these topics. This effort included research to identify American manufacturers of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) Part 2 Annex commodities. To gain initial responses from industry about whether these ideas could be reasonably implemented, in FY13 the project team conducted a series of outreach interviews. Outreach was initially focused on firms in the carbon fiber, filament winding, and maraging steel sectors. The project team chose these sectors based on the number of firms that produce these items and their proliferation relevance. As the year progressed, the team widened its outreach to manufacturers of a variety of NSG-controlled commodities. In total, the project team contacted 57 firms and conducted 13 interviews. The interviewed firms manufactured or distributed at least 11 controlled commodities. All interviews were conducted on a not for-public-attribution basis, and all information in this summary, unless otherwise cited, can be assumed to be derived from the interviews.
Beyond Compliance: Integrating Nonproliferation into Corporate Sustainability
This paper investigates nonproliferation as a potential corporate sustainability value. It reviews the history of corporate sustainability, builds the case for nonproliferation as a sustainability value, and develops recommendations for the integration of nonproliferation into the frameworks of sustainability.