The Oxford Guild is delighted to welcome and host Professor Steve Cowley FRS, CEO of the UK Atomic Energy Authority for a very exciting, highly topical and truly unique talk on Nuclear Power and its future from Nuclear from Hinkley Point to Fusion, on Thursday 27th October (3rd week) from 7.30pm in the the Saskatchewan Lecture Theatre at Exeter College.

On the 15th of September the government confirmed the agreement to build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset. This is the first of the new generation of UK nuclear power stations — a critical part of the plan to meet the UK’s targets on greenhouse gas emissions. But, as I will explain, nuclear technology will have to evolve to meet the world’s needs. By the middle of the century we must have fusion power — the ultimate energy source. I will describe why fusion has proved to be such a difficult scientific challenge and why results from experiments at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in the UK suggest that we will see fusion electricity by mid-century.