Nuclear weapons policy expert to visit Bates to discuss Maine’s role in curtailing

Laura Grego, an authority on nuclear weapons policy and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, gives a talk at Bates titled Putting the Nuclear Genie Back in the Bottle: Nuclear Weapons, Missile Defense and How Maine Fits In at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 29, in Room 204 of Carnegie Science Hall, 44 Campus Ave.

The talk is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6490.

Grego will discuss the threat to humanity posed by the thousands of nuclear weapons still in the arsenals of the United States and Russia, and the complications posed by American determination to build a national missile defense system.

Grego will argue that national missile defense still doesn’t work, despite billions of dollars invested. And it may actually undermine national security by impeding deep cuts in nuclear weapons, complicating important international relationships and engendering a false sense of security among policymakers.

Some members of Congress are pushing to expand the system and wanted to add more than $100 million to this year’s federal budget for a new missile defense site in the midwestern or eastern United States. A Navy training site in western Maine is one of the five sites being considered.

Grego focuses on nuclear weapons policy with an emphasis on missile defense policy. She is the author or co-author of more than 20 peer-reviewed published papers on a range of topics.

Since joining UCS in September 2002, she has been cited by The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New Scientist, New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today, and has appeared on Fox News, the Discovery Channel and NPR. She also has testified before Congress and addressed the United Nations Conference on Disarmament on space security issues.

Before joining UCS, Grego was a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She earned a doctorate degree in experimental physics at the California Institute of Technology and a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy at the University of Michigan.