The reason for this influx is that June will see the Universities of Oslo, Hamburg and King’s College London carry out the ‘Second International Full-Scale Nuclear Disarmament Verification Simulation’, that is: The centerpiece of educational capacity-building efforts that emerged from the UK-Norway initiative on nuclear disarmament verification research.
The first simulation—which took place from 13-17 June 2011 under the banner of ‘Developing Nuclear Warhead Dismantlement Verification Models for Civilian Education and Public Outreach Purposes’—was jointly organized by the University of Oslo and the King’s Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS), and hosted by the Norwegian Institute for Energy Technology.
This simulation built upon the achievements of the UK-Norway initiative (UKNi) between 2007 and 2009 by creating a simplified version of the UKNi framework that was able to involve students and academics from a number of nuclear and non-nuclear-weapon states.
The objective then, as now, was to enhance their shared knowledge of the political and technical issues surrounding warhead dismantlement verification.
The upcoming second simulations that are taking place in June 2012 will both build on lessons learned from the 2011 simulation and seek to identify different scenarios for future simulations and exercises.
The Oslo simulation in 2012 will take place in two parts: in cooperation with CSSS from 4-8 June, and from 25-29 June in cooperation with the Center for Science and Peace Research of the University of Hamburg.
The simulations’ preparatory phase will take place at the University of Oslo, while the actual simulations will be held at the Institute for Energy Technology. Both the King’s and Hamburg simulations are financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway under the Norwegian Disarmament Research Fund.
The program for the lectures at UiO for the first of the two simulation exercises is already published online. A detailed program for both simulations in 2012 will soon be published on this website.