The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force on January 22, 2021. It is a crucial component of international humanitarian law.

The very first resolution by the General Assembly of the nascent United Nations (UN), adopted in January 1946, called for the elimination of nuclear weapons, within months of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Yet — whereas other horrendous weapons of mass destruction, like mustard gas, were already banned by the Geneva Conventions after WWI and Napalm got added relatively soon after the Vietnam war — rejection of nuclear armament has been progressing at a lethargic pace.

In 2017, 122 nations voted to adopt the TPNW. In October 2020, Honduras became the 50^th state to ratify the Treaty, allowing it to become effective 90 days later.

Neither the United States nor any other nuclear-armed state — nor those states that are formally protected under nuclear “umbrellas” — have adopted or even seriously engaged in the TPNW. The United States organized a NATO-nations boycott of Treaty negotiations at the UN.

Nevertheless, the TPNW continues to grow in global popularity, with more than 90 signatory nations and more than 70 ratifying nations.

The presentation will discuss some of the unique features of the Treaty, including

• the focus on the humanitarian impacts of the nuclear threat
• the positive obligations the treaty places on party states
• the working groups developing the protocols of the Treaty.

These working groups have expanded the roster of Treaty working groups to include NGO representatives, academics, and technical experts in addition to the usual representatives of states party to a treaty.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can support the TPNW with resolutions and statements sent to elected officials and the media.

City and local governments by the thousands around the globe have adopted resolutions pressuring states and officials to sign the Treaty.

Ralph Hutchison is Administrative Coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA). He has served on state and federal advisory boards dealing with health and environmental impacts from nuclear weapons production and has participated in presentations about the US nuclear weapons complex at the United Nations (including in 2017, when the TPNW was being negotiated) and in briefings to Congressional staff.

He has served as president of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability and on the Coordinating Council of the Nuclear Ban Treaty Collaborative. He has participated in nonviolent direct action/civil resistance actions in the US and, most recently (2019), at the Büchel Air Base in Büchel, Germany, where US B-61 nuclear weapons are deployed.

For more information on TSK and its meetings, please email TSK secretary, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call him at 865-679-9854.

Phil Claxton graduated with BA and BS degrees from Washington and Lee. He received two Bronze Star medals for his service in the 5^th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Vietnam where he led a Mobile Strike Force reconnaissance unit. Next, he earned an MBA from Harvard and a JD from Georgetown.

Phil has more than 40 years of experience as a senior manager and entrepreneur. The last company he started and managed for almost 25 years, developed, manufactured, and placed more than 35,000 automatic blood pressure machines in pharmacies, worksites and health clubs around the world. They were used by more than 1,000,000 people a day in 30+ countries and saved thousands of lives every year.

He moved from Washington D.C. to Knoxville Tennessee to focus on restarting the Summer School of the South. His grandfather was the first Superintendent of the original Summer School founded in 1902, until he was appointed U. S. Commissioner of Education by President Taft in 1911.

The goal of the new Summer School will be to improve education in the South. Its ultimate objectives will include creating for southern employers a larger pool of workers who are good citizens with the skills needed by the employers and helping to raise the standard of living of everyone.

From 1904 Summer School of the South program

For more information on TSK and its meetings, please email TSK secretary, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call him at 865-679-9854.

Bob Scott is a chemical engineer (PE) with a BS from the University of Tennessee and MS from the University of Cincinnati.

He worked in the chemical industry for 16 years (duPont, Olin, Shell Chemical and Oak Ridge National Laboratory) and taught at Pellissippi State Community College for 26 years.

Bob is a current member of the TSK Board of Directors. He is a past president, and he also served as TSK’s secretary for many years.

At the age of 90 years Bob is beginning a new career as a theoretical particle physicist and this will be the first public presentation of his alternate theory of the composition of the standard model elementary particles.

In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a subatomic particle that is not composed of other particles. The Standard Model presently recognizes seventeen distinct particles — twelve fermions and five bosons. However many people suspect that a particle is not a fundamental particle if it breaks up into other particles shortly after it is created. One attempt at understanding the nature of fundamental particles is string theory, an idea in theoretical physics that reality is made up of infinitesimal vibrating strings, smaller than atoms, electrons or quarks.

Bob’s theory is: everything is made of positive and negative versions of a six sided particle he has named a “knuck.”

Not everyone will agree with his theory (does anyone?) but it may give you some thoughts. Several physicists have been very helpful.

For more information on TSK and its meetings, please email TSK secretary, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call him at 865-679-9854.

Allen Coggins is a toponymist (one who studies the cultural and historical heritage of a place or region). He has authored three books: Place Names of the Smokies, Tennessee Tragedies, and Escape from Bone Cave. He is presently working on a fourth book, tentatively entitled “The Meaning and Origin of Knoxville and Knox County Street Names.”

For much of his professional career, Allen was an emergency management specialist with Oak Ridge Associated Universities. He is a member of the Tennessee Committee on Geographic Names. This advisory committee reports to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names of the U.S. Geological Survey. In a previous life he was a conservationist who served as Chief Naturalist for both Georgia and Tennessee state parks.

Allan is a former president (2005) of our society. Along with Steve Hillenbrand and others, he is a member of the “Wednesday Afternoon Trailhead Beer Market Professors Roundtable.” He and wife Barbara reside in Blount County, close to their beloved Smokies. The presentation is about his upcoming book.

For more information on TSK and its meetings, please email TSK secretary, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call him at 865-679-9854.

Dr. H.M. “Hash” Hashemian is President and Chief Executive Officer of Analysis and Measurement Services Corporation (AMS); a nuclear engineering firm headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, and operating since 1977 in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

His technical and operational vision and leadership have enabled AMS to play a key role in ensuring the safe and cost-efficient operation of virtually every U.S. nuclear power plant, as well as many in Europe and Asia. He has accomplished these successes through the development and delivery of industry-leading instrumentation and control system testing and analysis equipment, training, and services.

A globally recognized expert in peaceful applications of nuclear energy for electricity generation and medical diagnostics and treatment, Dr. Hashemian lectures frequently around the world on nuclear power plant instrumentation and control areas. He holds three doctorate degrees in engineering including a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering, a Doctor of Engineering degree in electrical engineering, and a Ph.D. in computer engineering.

Dr. Hashemian is the author of three books titled: Sensor Performance and Reliability, Maintenance of Process Instrumentation in Nuclear Power Plants, and Monitoring and Measuring I&C Performance in Nuclear Power Plants. His books have been translated and published in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. In addition, he is the author or co-author of 22 U.S. patents and nearly 400 peer-reviewed journal and magazine articles, conference papers, 9 book chapters, and numerous reports, guideline documents, and standards for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Electric Power Research Institute, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Electrotechnical Commission, and others.

Dr. Hashemian is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Fellow of the International Society of Automation, and a member of the European Nuclear Society. He is also an adjunct professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee, and an adjunct professor of practice at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. In 2024, he was elected by the American Nuclear Society as its Vice President (2024-2025) and then President (2025-2026).

For more information on TSK and its meetings, please email TSK secretary, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call him at 865-679-9854.

Dr. Hongyu Zhou is head of the Sustainable and Adaptive Built Environment (SASE) Group that strives to pursue trans-disciplinary and cross-cutting research for future buildings and communities that are sustainable, energy-efficient and resilient to natural disasters.
He is part of the Institute for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing and his research focuses on

• smart and energy-efficient buildings
• dynamic and responsive building envelopes
• sustainable building materials
• bio-inspired and biomimetic design
• additive construction
• cyber-physical systems infrastructure and security

with an emphasis on using innovative materials, designs and cyber-physical technologies to improve the life-cycle performance of buildings and structures.

Dr. Zhou came to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2019 from the University of Alabama at Huntsville. He has PhD and MSE degrees in Civil Engineering from Arizona State University, Tempe and a BS in Civil Engineering from Tongji University in Shanghai, China.

For more information on TSK and its meetings, please email TSK secretary, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call him at 865-679-9854.

Jeff Cotton has over 20 years’ experience in information technology and security. He will provide information on recent text scams, phishing and email scams. Jeff will also explain ways to identify scams and provide ways to protect yourself online. 

For more information on TSK and its meetings, please email TSK secretary, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call him at 865-679-9854.