A "Transforming Energy" Lecture by Richard L. Garwin
December 9, 2011

Abstract

The pre-Fukushima talk of a renaissance enrgy has been replaced by the recognition that we must modify our approach if nuclear power is to regain public support and to be able to compete on the basis of economics and safety with other sources of energy in the near and long term. The talk discusses the question of secure fuel supply, accident, the role of reprocessing, and of breeder reactors of the future.

Biography

Richard L. Garwin is a member of the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Engineering. He serves on the Boards of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Federation of American Scientists. He also served on the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States in 1998, and is a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group. In 2002, Dr. Garwin received the National Medal of Science, the nation''s highest honor for the fields of science and engineering.

Dr. Garwin received his B.S. from the Case Institute of Technology in 1947 and his Ph.D. from Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago in 1949. He has been Professor of Public Policy at Harvard and for many years he was an adjunct professor of physics at Columbia University and, from 1952, a scientist at the IBM Watson Laboratory at Columbia University, retiring from IBM in 1993. He has also been an Andrew D. White Professor­-at-Large at Cornell University. See his website at www.fas.org/RLG/.