What a great day getting to know everyone! Nuclear Power has started off with quite the… bang! After an icebreaker, we had some really meaningful discussions about how to be a scientist. We also introduced the question: Does Nuclear Power help or harm our efforts to combat climate change? It’s a difficult question to answer, but we are working towards making informed decisions about this very topic!

Naturally, nuclear power can’t be viewed in isolation, so we had a few exercises where we learned about the different forms of power production, and did a few comparisons by ranking them in order of production in the US and the rest of the world. Nuclear production of energy falls in the middle. (Side note: oil is infrequently used in the US to generate electricity, but is the largest source of power production across the world). We also introduced the simulated problem that we’ll be working on this week: As the mayor of a town, which runs a nuclear power plant, should we work on expanding the waste storage facility? Or should we completely end the nuclear plant’s operations? We’ll explore the interconnectedness of these challenges, and how to make an informed decision. We also introduced ourselves to atoms and isotopes!

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