Title: Energy in the Earth, and the Role of Nuclear Power

Abstract: Life can be described as the existence who can utilize the energy. Among life, human may be best in energy utilization and actually use too much energy. This talk will review what is the energy, how the energy is used in earth and ecology through diverse transformation, and history of human energy use including fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear energy. As there is nothing free, the effect of the immense energy use by human upon the ecology and the climate in earth will be reviewed. As nuclear energy is a source of all the energy in the universe, the role of nuclear energy will be discussed reviewing characteristics of nuclear energy, and the way to enhance the public acceptance for nuclear power plant and radiation, to emphasize that the nuclear energy, and in particular, electricity from nuclear power plant is essential to energy use of human in the future.

Bio: Dr. Chan Bock Lee received his BS and MS in Nuclear Engineering from Seoul National University in South Korea and his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from MIT. He has been working at Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) since 1989. At KAERI, he has worked in fuel design, fabrication, irradiation testing and performance evaluation for diverse fuels such as UO2 fuel for commercial PWR, metallic fuel for SFR and research reactor, and TRISO fuel for VHTR. He served
as Division Director of Fuel Development at KAERI from 2011 to 2017 and Chair of Nuclear Fuel and Materials Division in Korea Nuclear Society from 2014 to 2016. This year he published “Energy Common Sense”, a book upon which will be the basis of this talk.