by Frank Hsia-San Shu
University Professor Emeritus
Ten Campuses of the University of California

Hosted by the Academy of Sciences of Hong Kong;
Cohosted by The Kadoorie Institute, The University of Hong Kong

Date: 17 February 2016 (Wednesday)
Time: 4:00 pm - registration
           4:30-6:00 pm - lecture
Venue: Wang Gungwu Theatre, Graduate House, HKU

At COP21 the nations of the world agreed to limit the mean global temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution to 2 degrees Celsius, with an aspirational target of 1.5 degrees if possible.  Most experts agree that when translated into carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, these goals are highly unlikely to be met without new technologies, with the more stringent target being impossible without negative carbon emissions.  We present two technologies developed by our research group: (1) supertorrefaction (STR), which uses the high heat capacity of molten salts to convert renewable waste biomass at high throughput into biocarbon that is either not burned, or is used as bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS); (2) two-fluid molten-salt breeder-reactors (2F-MSBRs) that operate on the renewable thorium fuel cycle instead of the once-through uranium fuel cycle used by today's light-water reactors. We argue that 2F-MSBRs are safer (accidents do not cause environmental disasters), more sustainable (by a factor of 100), and securer in terms of preventing weapons proliferation (no generation of  plutonium), with a solution for the problem of high-level nuclear waste (geological burial for 300 years instead of 300,000 years).  The high operating temperature of our patented design for 2F-MSBRs also allows the electro-chemical splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen, which then provides an economical method to store the intermittent energy of solar photovoltaic cells and wind turbines.  Water splitting gives a straight-forward way to combine the two technologies, STR and 2-F MSBR, so that a smooth transition is possible from finite stores of fossil fuels to renewable synfuels that do not require the abandonment of the huge expensive infrastructure established by the world economies over a century to support the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries.  With a determined effort, it should be possible to limit the rise of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere to a maximum of 450 ppm at year 2050 and then bring that level down to 350 ppm before year 2100.  In this manner, children yet to be born may inherit the type of climate that the older members of the audience enjoyed when they were young.

Dr. Frank H. Shu is a University Professor Emeritus of University of California at Berkeley and San Diego, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

As one of the world's leading authorities in theoretical a strophysics and star formation, Dr. Shu has made paradigm-shifting contributions to human’s understanding of how astronomical structures such as stars and spiral galaxies form. His pioneering work on the origins of stars over a span of 30 years has generated a comprehensive and widely accepted theory that explains the main events in the birth and evolution of a star from the collapse of a cloud of molecules, to the accretion of a magnetized disk of material from which planets form, to the appearance of jets and other outflows from young stellar objects. His textbook, The Physical Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, has been widely used by both undergraduate and graduate students for 30 years. In recognition of his outstanding lifetime contributions in theoretical astronomy, in 2009 he was awarded the Shaw Prize in Astronomy. His other awards include the 2009 Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal, the 2008 Centennial Medal from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. He was also the President of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). In addition, the main-belt asteroid 18238 Frankshu is named after him.

Dr. Shu was born in Kunming, China and came to the United States at the age of six. He received his BS in Physics at MIT and his Ph.D. in Astronomy at Harvard University. After 5-year stint at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, he joined the faculty of University of California at Berkeley, and served as Chair of the Astronomy Department from 1984 until 1988, and was appointed as University Professor in 1998, an honor bestowed on only 35 faculty members in the UC system since its founding. From 2002 to 2006 he served as President of National TsingHua University in Taiwan. He then joined the faculty of University of California at San Diego. In 2009 he retired as University Professor and accepted a position as a member of the Science and Technology Advisory Group and Advisor on Energy to the Premier of Taiwan. Since then, he has devoted his efforts to developing alternative sources of energy to replace burning of fossil fuels in response to the growing crisis of global climate change.