Deep Green: Long-Term Zero-Carbon Power for the 21st Century

Tatiana Arizaga, School of Physical Sciences E-Newsletter

On October 18, 2011, Dr. Shaka gave a lecture as part of the 2011-2012 Discover the Physical Sciences Breakfast Lecture Series in which he proposed nuclear technology as the solution to obtaining clean energy. Dr. Shaka believes that continued burning of fossil fuels, with the large influx of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, could prove to be an enormous and expensive future problem.  Furthermore, even if such changes could be weathered, the fossil fuels themselves will be exhausted, become expensive, and require more and more destructive methods to extract. For both these reasons, various “Green” solutions have been proposed:  solar and wind energy, biofuels, biomass, geothermal, tides and waves, and so on.  “Looking at these, they turn out to be “Green Lite” as they are either too small in scale, too expensive, too unreliable, or too intrusive in other ways,” said Dr. Shaka, “We need Deep Green, that is, power generation that spares the climate and keeps the wheels spinning.”

In the video below, Dr. Shaka presents his arguments for the various alternative energy methods to the audience at the first event of the 2011-2012 Breakfast Lecture Series.