Plenary Speaker
Biography
Yves Bréchet graduated from École Polytechnique (1981), École des hautes études en sciences sociales (1992) and obtained his doctoral degree and habilitation from Joseph Fourier University in 1987 and 1992, respectively.
He has been a full professor at Grenoble INP/Phelma between 1987 and 2012, an adjunct professor of materials science and engineering at McMaster University (Canada), a senior Research Professor at the Institut Universitaire de France, and a member of the SIMaP (Materials and Processes Science and Engineering) Laboratory with the University of Grenoble.
On 30 November 2010 he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences.
He has been a member of the international scientific council of ArcelorMittal and the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique, and a scientific advisor to Rio Tinto Alcan, EDF and ONERA, as well as several editing boards of scientific journals
On 19 September 2012 he was named to the position of High Commissioner for Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies by the President of the French Republic, succeeding Catherine Cesarsky.
He resigned from this position in 2018, and is now Scientific director of Saint Gobain, while keeping a position as Distinguished Research professor at Monash university, adjunct professor at McMaster university and advisory professor at Jiaotong university. Since 2018 he has been giving a course on "Scientific analysis for political decisions" at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. He is also president of the Scientific council of Framatome, and president of the scientific council of the non-profit "Maisons pour les Sciences" foundation for scientific education founded by Georges Charpak.
His activities have spanned the fields of physical metallurgy, thermodynamics, microstructures, phase transformations, plasticity, fracture micromechanics, material selection, structural materials design, biointerfaces, structural biomimetics. He has written more than 600 papers, co-authored 6 books and supervised more than 80 doctoral students.
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Sustainable Nuclear Energy and Global Warming
Yves Bréchet
French “Académie des Sciences”
Former High Commissaire for atomic energy, Research Professor in Monash University
Nuclear energy is known to be a very low carbonated energy source, and it provides a mature technology providing electricity which can be easily integrated in electrical networks. As such, it can be a powerful tool for decarbonation of our economies, via electrification, and should be considered as such in any long term planning to fight global warming.
As far as matter or space needs are concerned, nuclear energy is a very efficient way of producing electricity. However, various issues need special attention for this solution to be a sustainable one. These issues are on one side with waste management, on the other side on the efficient use of resources in fissile materials. These questions will be addressed from a scientific viewpoint, insisting on the “closure of the fuel cycle”, and on the efficiency of fast neutron devices to do so.