The National Security Studies Program began their seventh annual symposium Tuesday with Stanford Professor Siegfried Hecker presenting on North Korea's nuclear capabilities.
Hecker said that it is important for people to understand how nuclear power, and the capability of creating nuclear weapons, is uniquely dangerous.
"When you split the nucleus, which is what you do with nuclear weapons, you get a factor of a million. A million is so much, it has an enormous amount of destructive power or good power for making electricity,” he said. “People have to understand that nuclear power is different."
According to a University press release, Hecker is former president of the UNM Board of Regents and currently a professor at Stanford University in the Department of Management Science and Engineering. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation where he was co-director from 2007 to 2012 as well as emeritus director of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The NSSP is established under federal funding and allows UNM students to learn about careers, government analysis and intelligence analysis as well as providing them with information as to why they should consider working for the government in conducting the kind of security analysis that will be discussed during the symposium, said Frank Gilfeather, director of the NSSP at UNM.
The history of North Korea's nuclear capabilities explains the growth of the nation’s nuclear power program in the recent years, Hecker said. It is important to take notice, but there is no need for real concern, he said.
"Once they use their nuclear weapon they are finished ... What they are trying to do is preserve that regime to show that they have all that force locked up, and they will get us if we decide to start the fight. I am not worried about being nuked," Hecker said.
The NSSP was created for students in all fields of study and in all levels of higher education to learn about careers that aren't mentioned everyday and to give students knowledge on how to start a career in the government community, Gilfeather said.
He said the program works to provide students with opportunities to travel and take courses associated with government agencies, sometimes resulting in employment.
"We are very pleased that some of our students have gotten jobs in the intelligence community and other government agencies by learning about the careers through this program,” Gilfeather said.
Some of the subject matter taught in NSSP-provided courses would be suitable for larger populations of the student body, Hecker said. He said they aren’t understood as the widely applicable courses they should be.
"This class does a good service in the University by exposing students to these kinds of major issues in the world. You don't hear enough of that in the presidential debates, for example, so it's good that the students take that in,” Hecker said.
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Hecker said he was happy to return to New Mexico and teach students not affiliated with NSSP, students of the weapons of mass destruction non-proliferation class and anyone interested in North Korea's nuclear capabilities.
"(Coming back to teach UNM students) was a great pleasure," Hecker said. "I never went to school here but I was on the Board of Regents for eight years and I enjoyed that very much. It gave me a good sense of what UNM is all about, how good many of the departments here are and how dedicated the students are."
For anyone interested, the rest of the Symposium will continue and begin discussions on religion, terrorism, migration issues involved with the middle eastern turmoil resuming in the Student Union Building on April 5th .
The remainder of the symposium will continue the discussion of nuclear power, as well as topics of religion, terrorism, migration and Middle Eastern turmoil in the SUB next month.
Denicia Aragon is a staff reporter with the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com on Twitter @dailylobo.
