Sustainability and Nuclear Energy: How Will We Power the Future?

Featuring Kenneth L. Nash, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Chemistry
Washington State University

Location:  McDonnell-Douglas Auditorium
Free and open to the public

Abstract:
About 85% of the energy consumed at present on Earth is derived from fossil carbon. Though the Industrial Revolution that produced today’s standard of living was fueled primarily by these resources, increasing evidence that atmospheric CO2 is causing (or at minimum contributing to) perceived changes in the global climate reduces the desirability of continuing to exploit carbon as a primary energy source.

Furthermore, all indications are that exploitable oil supplies are in decline. Worst case scenarios place the end of oil only a few decades in the future. Oil might in fact become too valuable as a chemical feedstock to be used for combustion to produce heat. Though there has been resistance in some quarters to the idea that a significant response to this combined energy-environmental “crisis” is needed today, political and scientific leaders around the world are increasingly accepting of the need for change, particularly for new energy supplies.

In this presentation, an overview of the current status of energy supplies and usage will be offered focusing primarily on energy as the primary driver of continuing advancement of society. The role of fission-based nuclear energy (with and without recycle of useful components) in defining this future will be emphasized.
 
About the Speaker:
Kenneth Nash, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Washington State University (WSU). He received his B.A. in chemistry, 1972 from Lewis University; M.S. in inorganic chemistry, 1975, Florida State University; and, Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry, 1978, Florida State University.

At Argonne National Laboratory, where he worked for 20 years, he has focused principally on chemical separations science and the basic coordination chemistry of actinides and important fission products (mainly lanthanides). Nash joined the Department of Chemistry at WSU in the fall of 2003 to bring some of this extensive practical experience to the task of helping to educate a new generation of nuclear/radiochemists and separation scientists.

He is active in the Nuclear Chemistry and Technology Division and in the Separations Science and Technology Subdivision of the Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society, co-editor in chief of the journal Solvent Extraction and Ion Exchange, associate editor of the journal Radiochimica Acta, on the Editorial Board of the journal Separation Science and Technology, and co-editor of three symposium series books. Nash was a visiting scholar at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute at Tokai-mura in 2000, and is the 2003 recipient of the Glenn T. Seaborg Award for Actinide Separations.