Michael Douglas visits DC in support of treaties and preventing the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons

Actor and producer Michael Douglas visited with Senator Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) to discuss the Ploughshares Fund, the Nunn-Lugar Act, and the Law of the Sea. The Ploughshares Fund is an organization that awards grants “aimed at preventing the spread and use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and other weapons of war, and preventing conflicts that could lead to the use of weapons of mass destruction,” according to their website. Douglas said he became interested in this topic in 1978 after doing the film “The China Syndrome.” He said the Three Mile Island incident near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania occurred shortly after the movie came out.

Douglas said his interest continued to grow when he was researching where his father came from, and learned he was from an area downwind from Chernobyl in the Soviet Union, the site of another nuclear power plant accident. He said he is meeting with Sen. Lugar because he is in support of treaties and methods to keep peace.

Lugar said acceleration of the Nunn-Lugar Act depends on negotiations with Russia. The Nunn-Lugar Act established the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program that has “provided U.S. funding and expertise to help the former Soveit Union safeguard and dismantle its enormous stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, related materials, and delivery systems,” according to a press release from Lugar’s office.