Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

PopAtomic produces useful training aid to explain Fukushima Daiichi to school children

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Corrected copy (spelling): My friends at PopAtomic Studios recently posted this graphic as a resource for teachers and parents. Here is the credit provided:

It is important to explain the situation at Fukushima to children in a way that is not alarming. Please share this image with parents and teachers. Special thanks to the Student American Nuclear Society Chapter at the University of South Carolina, and photographer Christine Kennedy.

IMHO it might also be useful to share with your friendly neighborhood journalists and politicians.

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  1. Its difficult to listen to anything come from MIT without thinking about their large and long – since 1990 – involvement in partnering with the coal industry to foster Carbon Capture technology. He’s out of touch with what is going on down on the street. He spoke of the Hyperion and PRISM as if they were emerging designs like LFTRs and TravelingWaves. He doesn’t seem to have learned the lessons tought by the computer revolution: Being huge, expensive, clumsy, and inflexible are rarely advantages in the marketplace. There are at least 8 additional advantages the new small reactors can have over your father’s reactor that have created a whole new nuclear power paradigm.

  2. Rod Adams wrote:
    As Dr. Moniz points out, the United States went through a long period that discouraged some of the smartest students in the country from studying the topics that would be useful to them in becoming nuclear specialists. However, my view is that those minds are no more lost to nuclear energy than is the material stored in those dry casks. We can attract the brilliant engineers who have been designing computers, automobiles, wind turbines and space shuttles for the past 30 years and teach them what they need to know about nuclear in less time than it takes to license the first new units.
    While there are ups and downs in every industry and thus engineering discipline, seldom does that specific field of interest go away entirely. The brightest minds in each field tend to do well through thick and thin, and are usually the most passionate about it. These are the types of minds one would want to have in nuclear, but are the least likely to switch careers. The best one can hope is that some good engineers develop a new-found passion for nuclear energy and make the switch.
    Personnaly, if I were to choose an engineering career now, it would be nuclear. I have done well in my field of electrical engineering for the past 36 years, so at this point I am not looking to make a career switch, other retiring from my full time job to teach beginning electrical engineering courses part time. But if any bright high school student (or parent thereof) should ask, I would certainly recommend nuclear engineering, though I would make sure the student has a passion for it first.

    • My son is in his Junior year in a nuclear engineering program. Glad to hear you think it’s a good choice (I am a materials scientist myself).

      • @SteveK9, it will be a good career for him so long as he has a passion for it. I use that word a lot (3 times in my original posting), because it matters a lot. In my case, I was playing around with electrical stuff even before grade school, and never stopped being interested in electronics. I found myself mystified by some of peers in college, who weren’t sure what subject they wanted to be their major.