 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
November 8, 2007
The Lyric Theatre, Blacksburg Project Founder: Doris T. Zallen For more information, contact the Choices and Challenges Project,
Department of Science and Technology in Society |
Schedule Background Sessions - Graduate Life Center at Donaldson-Brown
This session will address the significant advances made in nuclear power over the last two decades and what the future might hold for us in this key area. It will deal with drawbacks associated with nuclear power, both real and mythical. We will explore the use of nuclear power as a part of a larger solution to global warming.
This session will explore the pros and cons of nuclear power and how it fits into America's modern electricity portfolio.
Given the advances in technology and the change in the climate of
Main Panel - The Lyric Theater Moderator
Panelists Donald Aitken is currently Principal of Donald Aitken Associates, and Affiliate Faculty Member at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. He was founder and Chairman of the Department of Environmental Studies at San Jose State University, where he was named "Professor of the Year," and was a staff research physicist and astrophysicist at Stanford University. He is internationally known as an expert on renewable energy, basing his work on a clear understanding of Earth’s living system. Timothy Foresman was GIS Manager for Clark County, Nevada during the late 1980s when the Dept of Energy was working on the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository siting plans in Clark County. He has served on the faculties of the University of Marylad in the US and Keio University in Japan; and is president of the International Center for Remoting Sensing Education (ICRSE).. Kenneth Rogers served as commissioner of he United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for ten years. First apointed by President Reagan for a five-year term, he was then reappointed for a second five-year term by President Bush. Matthew L. Wald is a staff reporter in the New York Times Washington Bureau where he has reported extensively on transportation safety and energy issues. Previously, he has covered energy and the environment for Business Day. Langdon Winner is a political theorist who focuses upon social and political issues that surround modern technological change. He is the author of Autonomous Technology, a study of the idea of technology-out-of-control" in modern social thought, The Whale and The Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, and editor of Democracy in a Technological Society. Lunch Follow-up Sessions - Graduate Life Center at Donaldson-Brown
The session will consider the relationship of the anti-nuclear movement to broader critiques of technology and society in the post-WWII era. The anti-nuclear movement in the immediate aftermath of WWII was an anti-weapons, pro-power critique leveled by nuclear scientists, yet became a contentious issue even among scientists and engineers by the early 1970s. The session will ask how it is that competing interests can envision nuclear power as a social and environmental benefit and as a social and environmental disaster.
Small-scale renewable energy technologies have improved dramatically in the past 20 years. Nonetheless, they remain underutilized in the American electric utility system. This seminar attempts to answer the paradoxical question: Why do energy technologies that offer such impressive economic, environmental, and political benefits also find the least use?
Coffee & Dessert Reception
|
||||||||||||||||||||||