Fear of Invisible ForcesANS Nuclear CafeSeptember 14, 2011, 6:00AM|Suzy Hobbs BakerNothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. ~Marie CuriePerhaps it is instinctual to be afraid of that which we don't understand. Some of the most difficult aspects of our world to understand are the things we cannot easily comprehend or predict-weather, disease, even the stock market! Despite modeling, tracking, and analysis, our contemporary lives are still filled with unknowns.Of course, throughout human existence we have overcome our fears, and faced many fundamental invisible forces with curiosity. This has allowed us to understand and benefit from their unseen power, such as gravity and magnetism. The discovery and research of these forces has led to advancements in our understanding of physics, and ultimately to real-life applications such as electricity and modern medicine.So, in this post, I am going to attempt to address two invisible forces that I believe need to be embraced by the public with inquisitiveness, respect, and, ultimately, action: carbon and radiation. Of course, these two invisible forces are fundamentally different from a scientific perspective (one is a basic element, the other a release of energy), but they share some common traits in that they are both byproducts of electricity production, both invisible, and both potentially dangerous to human health.Come to think of it, these are the issues that got me interested in nuclear energy to begin with-the invisible and sometimes scary forces.So here we go, let's start with climate change and environmental carbon.There is an incredibly strong consensus (about 97 percent of climate scientists agree, but not so much the everyday citizens) that we should not only be concerned about the effects of atmospheric carbon, but also should be taking steps to reduce carbon emissions now. In the past six months, several updates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report have been released, concluding that the rates of Arctic ice melt and temperature change are faster than was previously predicted.This is a really big problem. We cannot see, smell, taste, or touch carbon dioxide, but we can measure and monitor its impact on our ecosystem. There is abundant evidence of the damage it is doing, but we continue to collectively make this problem worse, day in and day out, by burning more and more fossil fuels.Like carbon, radiation also eludes the senses and is actually a natural, relatively harmless entity. The dangerous thing is that we humans have managed to concentrate both carbon and radiation in our attempt to improve our quality of life through the use of electricity. With carbon, the concentrations are happening in our atmosphere, in a way that is basically out of our control. With radiation, we have managed to safely contain and control it, and have become very good at containing this byproduct, and often use it for good in food irradiation and nuclear medicine.The way I see it, if the public is scared of radiation, the best way to allay that fear is to talk about it. Get good simple information out there. If the public is scared of too much carbon in the atmosphere, well, perhaps that is a well-founded fear.Man-made radiation is easily and safely contained. Uncontrolled CO2 emissions are not.In sum, this is certainly a simplification of the issues we face in moving forward with clean energy, but in many ways it really boils down to one question: Which invisible force should we fear more? And perhaps an even better answer: Instead of fearing these forces, let's do our best to understand them, and take action to protect our planet and ourselves as soon as possible.______________BakerSuzy Hobbs Baker is the executive director of PopAtomic Studios, a non-profit organization dedicated to using the power of visual and liberal arts to enrich the discussion on nuclear energy. Baker is an ANS member and a frequent contributor to ANS Nuclear Cafe.Tags:educationenvironmental benefits of nuclearirradiationknowledge transferradiationShare:LinkedInTwitterFacebook
ORISE reports uptick in nuclear engineering master’s degreesAn increase in the number of master’s degrees awarded in the United States in 2019 pushed the total number of nuclear engineering degrees to its highest level since 2016, according to a study conducted by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) that surveyed 34 U.S. universities with nuclear engineering programs. The report, Nuclear Engineering Enrollments and Degrees Survey, 2019 Data, includes degrees granted between September 1, 2018, and August 31, 2019, as well as enrollments for fall 2019. It was released by ORISE in February.Details: The 316 nuclear engineering master’s degrees awarded in 2019 represented a 21 percent increase over the 2018 total, and a 12 percent increase over the number awarded in 2017. The 194 doctoral degrees awarded in 2019 represented the second-highest level recorded since 1966.Go to Article
Exelon Generation’s workforce development and knowledge transfer strategyStudents display items they received at a STEM workshop sponsored by Exelon. Photo: Exelon. The landscape of Exelon Generation’s nuclear business has continued to evolve—even before the complications of a pandemic—but people will always remain the core focus. Our employees and our future employee pipelines are changing almost as fast as technology, which is why the development of the workforce, both present and future, along with the transfer of knowledge across all departments and levels of the organization, must remain adaptable and advance as well.Go to Article
Farming in FukushimaScreenshot of the video from Vice. Vice News has published a video on YouTube that follows two farmers from the Fukushima Prefecture, Noboru Saito and Koji Furuyama. Saito, who grows many different crops on his farm, says that the rice grown in the area is consistently rated as the best. Furuyama specializes in peaches and explains his strategy to deal with the stigma of selling fruit from Fukushima: grow the best peaches in the world.Go to Article
The Toxic Pigs of Fukushima kicks off an online documentary seriesA film titled The Toxic Pigs of Fukushima gets top billing as part of The Short List with Suroosh Alvi, an online documentary series curated by the founder of the media company Vice. The film, which first aired on Vice TV on January 31, follows local hunters who have been enlisted to dispose of radiated wild boars that now roam abandoned streets and buildings in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused the nuclear accident there.Go to Article
John Gilligan: NEUP in support of university nuclear R&DJohn Gilligan has been the director of the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) since its creation in 2009 by the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE). NEUP consolidates DOE-NE’s university support under one program and engages colleges and universities in the United States to conduct research and development in nuclear technology. The two main R&D areas for NEUP funding are fuel cycle projects, which include evolving sustainable technologies that improve energy generation to enhance safety, limit proliferation risk, and reduce waste generation and resource consumption; and reactor projects, which strive to preserve the existing commercial light-water reactors as well as improve emerging advanced designs, such as small modular reactors, liquid-metal-cooled fast reactors, and gas- or liquid-salt-cooled high-temperature reactors.Go to Article
Nuclear Education and COVID-19The COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States on a wide basis in March of this year, and life as we knew it changed. “Social distancing” and “essential workers” entered the jargon and working from home for many became the norm.The number of remote meetings skyrocketed, and various companies have seen that business can be conducted without having employees in the office. For universities, distance learning has been common for a while now, but with COVID it has become essential.Nuclear News asked some nuclear engineering professors about how their programs have been dealing with the pandemic. We posed three questions and asked for responses to any or all of them:How has COVID affected your NE program, and what have you learned from the experience?Has your NE program been able to contribute to your university’s broader COVID response (e.g., through research or volunteer programs)?What opportunities or challenges do you foresee in the next year for your program and your students?The following are responses received by NN.Go to Article
Nuclear engineering programs: Building the new nuclear workforceIn order to deliver the next generation of nuclear power plants, the nuclear community needs to overcome a number of challenges identified in 2017 as part of the ANS Nuclear Grand Challenges presidential initiative. Knowledge transfer is one of the nine challenges identified. The goal of the challenge is to “expedite updates to the higher education Nuclear Engineering curriculum to better match today’s needs.” The Nuclear Grand Challenges report noted that “effective means to transfer that knowledge to the newest group of scientists and engineers needs to be developed and implemented. With the advent of new reactor designs and the challenges within materials science to meet the needs of these new designs, the curriculum structure must be reviewed and updated to better meet the needs of industry, suppliers, and research organizations.” Nuclear engineering programs at universities around the country are integral to training and developing the workforce to implement the next generation of nuclear energy. Nuclear News reached out to several such nuclear engineering departments, asking them to provide our readers with an update on how their unique programs are helping meet this important challenge.Go to Article
The value of “fluffy” stuffMary Lou Dunzik-GougarYou know the old saying that those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach? Well, I say anyone thinking that way should be kept far away from students!In my time at Argonne National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory, I worked with incredible scientists and engineers doing cutting-edge research. Unfortunately, making progress in research is not always conducive to the education and training of those who haven’t yet gained the necessary expertise. And there is an interesting phenomenon that occurs the more one gains in education and experience: We tend to forget what we were like before, what it was like not to know everything we do now. More than one of my PhD colleagues at the national labs dismissed the education and outreach efforts that I pursued in my spare time: scouts, K-12 classroom visits, teacher workshops, science expos, etc., viewing any focus other than the truly technical as just “fluffy” and a waste of valuable time and effort.Go to Article
U.S. university programs: Lighting the way to a brighter nuclear futureCraig PiercyWe have dedicated this month’s edition of Nuclear News to university programs and their contributions in advancing the field of applied nuclear science and technology and readying the next generation of scientists and engineers.Say what you want about the condition of the U.S. nuclear enterprise today, but there is no denying that our university-based programs in nuclear science and engineering are still the envy of the world. You can see it in the way these programs attract students and faculty from across the globe, and from their formative contributions to technologies, such as the NuScale power module and many of the advanced reactor designs being developed today.Go to Article
NEDHO: A nuclear education allianceThe Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization (NEDHO) is an alliance of the heads (chairs) of about 30 nuclear engineering schools, departments, and programs in the United States. NEDHO is managed by an executive committee consisting of the chair, the chair-elect, and the three most immediate past-chairs. NEDHO meetings are normally held in conjunction with the American Nuclear Society’s national meetings. The NEDHO meetings are open to anyone, but on matters that require a vote, each institution is limited to a single official representative (i.e., one vote).Go to Article