James M. Acton

James M. Acton is a British academic and scientist. He is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Early life Acton was awarded his PhD in theoretical physics at Cambridge University.

Career Acton was a member of the faculty of the Department of War Studies at King's College London.

Fukushima In the context of the Fukushima I nuclear accidents, Acton was able to distill a succinct analysis which was widely reported. "Fukushima is not the worst nuclear accident ever but it is the most complicated and the most dramatic...This was a crisis that played out in real time on TV. Chernobyl did not." "The key question is whether we have correctly predicted the risk that a reactor could be hit by a disaster (natural or man-made) that is bigger than it is designed to withstand."

Selected works In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about James Acton, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 7 works in 10+ publications in 1 language and 268 library holdings.

The Use of Voluntary Safeguards to Build Trust in States' Nuclear Programmes: the Case of Iran (2007) Beyond the Dirty Bomb: Re-thinking Radiological Terror (2007) Abolishing Nuclear Weapons (2008), with George Perkovich Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (2009), with George Perkovich Deterrence During Disarmament: Deep Nuclear Reductions and International Security, and Low Numbers: A Practical Path to Deep Nuclear Reductions (2011)