James Acton

Dr. Acton is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment. His research spans the field of nuclear policy. He is the author of two Adelphi books, Deterrence During Disarmament: Deep Nuclear Reductions and International Security and Abolishing Nuclear Weapons (Routledge, 2011). He wrote, with Mark Hibbs, “Why Fukushima Was Preventable,” a first-of-its-kind study into the accident’s root causes. He has published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Survival, and Washington Quarterly. Dr. Acton is a member of the Commission on Challenges to Deep Cuts and of the Nuclear Security Working Group. He is a former member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials and was co-chair of the Next Generation Working Group on U.S.-Russian arms control. Dr. Acton received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Cambridge.