Tackling an imminent nuclear threat is no easy task and often requires a delicate, multi-pronged approach. So far, both politicians and engineers are taking actions to quiet the fear of Iranian nuclear weapons development. On January 10th, Iran violated the United Nations’ Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by breaking open the seals on the nuclear facility at Natanz. This disregard for U.N. protocol prompted foreign ministers from Russia, China, Britain, France and the United States — the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — to meet yesterday and ask the IAEA to take the case of Iran’s nuclear program to the Security Council. Involving the Security Council is a last resort and will only result in increased tensions between Iran and the U.N. In an earlier Newsweek interview with Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General of IAEA, ElBaradei lamented that
[W]e are coming to the litmus test in the next few weeks. Diplomacy is not just talking. Diplomacy has to be backed by pressure and, in extreme cases, by force. We have rules. We have to do everything possible to uphold the rules through conviction. If not, then you impose them. Of course, this has to be the last resort, but sometimes you have to do it.
Iran has already expressed its discontent at this new direction. Last night, the Islamic republic’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, told state television: “Reporting Iran’s dossier to the UN Security Council will be unconstructive and the end of diplomacy.” On Thursday, February 2nd, the International Atomic Energy Association will meet in Vienna and discuss a course of action that will be formally decided in March.
While the IAEA proceeds cautiously with their graduated confrontation with Iran, U.S. scientists and engineers are developing better technology to remotely detect the presence of nuclear activity. Hoping to avoid the mistakes made during the U.S. investigation of the possibility of Iraqi weapons, scientists and engineers are pursuing more effective methods of sensing nuclear traces. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the research “focuses on better detection of four basic, but inconspicuous, signatures that covert nuclear facilities and materials can emit: distinctive chemicals, sounds, electromagnetic waves and isotopes, or forms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons, a subatomic building block.” Whether Iran will respond to increased reprisal from the U.N. or attempt to circumvent these developing technologies with undetectable nuclear sites remains to be seen. Read more about what engineers and scientists are doing to diminish Iran’s nuclear threat.
Can a few students save Tulane Engineering? Tuesday marked the bittersweet reopening of Tulane University’s School of Engineering. Burdened with $250 million in property damage and more than $90 million in operational losses, Tulane University was faced with incredibly difficult choices about how to lead the university into solvency. On December 8th, 2005, Scott Cowan, the President of Tulane University, announced the board’s decision to eliminate the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Mechanical Engineering. The two remaining departments in the School of Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering, will be merged into a new School of Science and Engineering. 