Thursday 15 March 2012

18:30 - 20:30

Institute of Physics, London

 

Science Question Time is now an established and successful venture between the Biochemical Society, the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) and staff at Imperial College London. At this, the sixth Science Question Time in London, we invited speakers and the audience to discuss nuclear power and the future of nuclear policy. This event formed part of the National Science and Engineering Week and Climate Week event programmes.

 

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After the event:

Searching Twitter for the hashtag #SciQT will provide you with a rich source of commentary from both during the event and the discussion following.

 

A podcast is available to listen to or download (with thanks to staff at the Institute of Physics for recording the event).

 

Boing Boing did a report of the event here - Listen to a sane debate about nuclear energy - which has helped the podcast go 'viral', with over 120,000 people having listened to the debate.

 

Chair and panelists:

 

Geoff has written for Nature since 2002. Prior to this, he wrote for New Scientist, ScienceNOW, and Physical Review Focus, among others. Geoff holds a double-degree in physics and English, and a master's in science writing. In 2007, he moved from Nature's Washington bureau to London, where he now covers physics, space, and policy from a European perspective.

Roger Cashmore was appointed Chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority in July 2010. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the former Principal of Brasenose College in Oxford, as well as being Professor of Experimental Physics in Oxford. He is a former Director of Research and Deputy Director General of CERN, where he was responsible for the experimental programme at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Before leaving for CERN he was Chairman of Physics in Oxford.

Antony Patrick Froggatt has studied energy and environmental policy at the University of Westminster and the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University. He is currently an independent consultant on international energy issues and a senior research fellow at Chatham House. While working here he has specialised on energy security and in particular working in emerging economies, with extensive work in China on the establishment and methodologies of low carbon economic development.

Dr Douglas Parr is Chief Scientist and Policy Director at Greenpeace UK. Currently working on climate change policy in the power, heat and transport sectors, he has previously worked on a number of issues including GM crops, chemicals policy, green refrigeration, marine conservation and bioenergy. He obtained a D.Phil in Atmospheric Chemistry from Oxford University in 1991.

Baroness (Bryony) Worthington is an experienced climate campaigner who has worked for Friends of the Earth (FOE), the government and in the private sector. Bryony developed the concept of 'carbon budgets' whilst at FOE and was a key member of the team that drafted the UK's Climate Change Bill. She is the founder of Sandbag and is a Labour life peer in the House of Lords.