The Energy Challenge

This lecture is now fully booked. It will be available to watch online as a podcast after the event.

Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, Theoretical Physics, Oxford and Chair ITER Council, presents the Gabor Lecture 2008: The Energy Challenge

Abstract: A large increase in world energy use is expected.  The developed world could survive perfectly well with less energy, but an increase is needed to lift billions out of poverty in the developing world, where a quarter of the world’s population lacks electricity.  Meeting future demand will be difficult enough, and meeting it in an environmentally responsible manner will be an enormous challenge.  The world’s remaining fossil fuels will be burned, so developing the technology to capture and store carbon dioxide, and then (if feasible) rolling it out on the largest scale reasonably possible, must be a priority.  In parallel, we need to prepare for rising costs and the eventual exhaustion of fossil fuels, which currently provide 80% of the world’s primary energy.  I will survey the energy challenge and the social, political and technical responses that are needed.  They include: using less energy, more efficiently; deploying renewables on the largest scale reasonably possible; expanding the use of nuclear power; and for the long-term – developing and improving  (uranium and thorium-based) breeder reactors, solar power, and fusion as the only options that can in principle replace a large fraction of the energy supplied by fossil fuels.  I will deal with fusion, which is still in the development phase, in a little more detail than nuclear and solar power, because it is less well known and is the area in which I have been working.

Biography: Chris Llewellyn Smith is a theoretical physicist.  He is currently Chairman of the Council of ITER (the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor) and of the Consultative Committee for Euratom on Fusion (CCE-FU), and President of the Council of SESAME (Synchrotron light for Experimental Science and its Applications in the Middle East).  At the end of 2008 he will become a Vice President of the Royal Society.  He was Director of UKAEA Culham (2003-2008), with responsibility for the UK's fusion programme and for operation of the Joint European Torus (JET), Provost and President of University College London (1999 - 2002), Director General of CERN (1994 - 1998), and Chairman of Oxford Physics (1987 - 1992).  During his mandate as Director General of CERN the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was approved and started, and CERN’s flagship Large Electron Positron collider (LEP) was successfully upgraded.  Chris Llewellyn Smith’s scientific contributions and leadership have been recognised by awards and honours in seven countries on three continents.

A drinks reception will follow the lecture.

Ticket: Registration in advance