Title:

SUSTAINABLE EXPANSION OF NUCLEAR POWER

Speaker:

Dr. Weston Stacey

Affiliation:

Georgia Tech

When:

Thursday, March 15, 2012 at 11:00:00 AM   Add to Calendar

Where:

Boggs Building, Room 3-47

Host:

Dr. Sang Cho
scho@gatech.edu
404-385-1301

Abstract

Nuclear power is the most technically credible option for world-wide expansion of carbon-free electricity. However, sustainable expansion of nuclear power requires closing the nuclear fuel cycle—immediate utilization, rather than burial, of the fissionable material remaining in spent nuclear fuel and eventual utilization of much more of the potential fissionable energy content of uranium than the present 0.7%—and production of fusion power on industrial scale by the end of the century. This seminar will review future electrical energy needs and potential fuel resources, the status of fusion development and the idea of using a fusion-fission hybrid to close the nuclear fuel cycle.

Biography

W. M. Stacey is a professor of nuclear engineering at Georgia Tech with extensive experience in nuclear reactor physics and fusion plasma physics research and the design of nuclear fission and fusion reactors. He is a Fellow of both the American Nuclear Society and the American Physical Society, the author of several research monographs and textbooks and of a few hundred research papers, and the recipient of the Wigner Reactor Physicist and Seaborg awards from the American Nuclear Society and the Distinguished Associate award from the US Dept. of Energy.