Café Inquiry: Why Nuclear Power?

Café Inquiry is a monthly casual discussion group run by CFI Vancouver. Come along and enjoy afternoon tea and stimulating discussion with fellow freethinkers on a variety of topics.

In order to be economical and useful, a power plant must produce more energy than it costs to build and run it. This concept is known as Energy-returned-on-energy-invested, or EROI. Careful consideration of this concept in conjunction with a rigorous skeptical eye on the numbers produced (see http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544213000492) seems to rule out certain popular approaches to energy production. Nuclear energy on the other hand excels from an EROI perspective but remains unpopular for a variety of other reasons.

Our May Café will be moderated by Lars Martin. Lars is a physicist in the process of finishing up his PhD in Nuclear Astrophysics at TRIUMF. He is not directly involved in nuclear energy but generally in favour. He has voted for the Green Party before.

Café Inquiry is free but donations are requested to keep the program running.