Last week we were assigned our groups for the final project. Our group consists of Mauro, Brittany, and myself. When we first got together we were very concerned about what to do for our project because of our very limited scientific backgrounds, but soon enough things started to come together and we got some good ideas flowing.

Mauro explained to us that he is an economics major and has a great deal of interest in helping developing nations. He told us how he wanted to do something regarding solar energy and how that can be delivered to developing or third world nations. Considering that Brittany and I had very few ideas as to what to do, and since Mauro was very willing to bring what he knows and is interested in to the table, we decided that this would be a good plan.

We thing researched some solar experiments online. Something that we decided that we want to communicate through our lab is how much energy can actually be generated through solar power. Though we did touch on this on our class’ solar panel lab, we want to reinforce some of those lessons from that lab and then find a way to apply that to developing nations who might not have electricity.

After recently watching the documentary Pandora’s Promise I learned that access to electricity and power is something that can define a country as first world. Access to electricity and power dramatically impacts the quality of life of the citizens of that country and I feel as though that is an important thing to tackle in our lab and presentation. We plan on doing a great deal of work and research in our next class meeting and in the coming weeks to make this a good experience.

Something that we must realize is that our climate, unfortunately, is as much an environmental issue as it is a political issue. In many ways this issue polarizes our political parties and makes compromise increasingly difficult. Today, a raging topic in environmental and political news is the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. This blog post will talk about some of the properties of the pipeline, some pros and some cons.

Oil pipeline

On the Keystone XL website in their “about” section, they describe the project as a “proposed 1,179-mile (1,897 km), 36-inch-diameter crude oil pipeline beginning in Hardisty, Alberta, and extending south to Steele City, Neb. This pipeline is a critical infrastructure project for the energy security of the United States and for strengthening the American economy”. However, for construction on the pipeline to start, President Obama and the U.S. State Department need to make an affirmative decision on it. The pipeline has the capacity to deliver 590,000 barrels per day.

Canadian Tar-sands

There are many proponents of this project, namely the Canadian government, and oil companies and their executives.  This will be a huge influx of cash for these two entities, which is something that is hard to ignore. Proponents of the pipeline know that this will be a job-creator, bringing work to a lot of Americans and Canadians who might not have work otherwise. It is speculated that the construction of this pipeline will bring just over 42,100 jobs to the hurting job market in the US. Additionally, the KXL will help dramatically in our dependence on foreign oil, an issue that has brought about a great deal of conflict in recent decades.

But that’s just it. These are jobs for construction. Recently the State Department released in an 11-chapter report that stated that after construction of the pipeline is completed there would be only 35 permanent positions available. 35 permanent jobs is not an adequate jump to any economy, let alone one of the biggest in the world and probably does more harm than good to it. Lets not ignore the obvious here: the immense environmental impact and economic problems that this will wage. The opening of the Canadian tar-sands will release incredible amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, not to mention the distinct possibility of something going wrong with the pipeline and a leak springing and causing a LAND oil spill of dramatic proportions. On top of that, following through with this pretty much cements us into using fossil fuels for an extended stretch of time, which is horrible for the environment and even worse for our wallets.

KXL protesters

Additionally, I did some research into the political support that Keystone XL Pipeline has in the US Senate. Maplight.org says that many of the Senators who are in support of the pipeline have either received sizable campaign donations from oil companies or hold stock in some sort function of the pipeline, namely Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), David Vitter (R-La.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.),Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) just to name a few. I am aware that this is supposed to be a science-based blog post, but I feel that this information is hard to ignore and sounds a lot to me like conflict of interest.

Obviously, whatever the correct decision is, I hope it is made. As a proud Canadian and American, I am aware of the benefits to this project (especially the Canadian benefits), but the pitfalls are almost too massive to ignore.

References

http://www.newsweek.com/state-department-keystone-xl-pipeline-would-only-create-35-permanent-jobs-228898

http://maplight.org/content/73403

http://www.nwf.org/What-We-Do/Energy-and-Climate/Drilling-and-Mining/Tar-Sands/Keystone-XL-Pipeline.aspx

http://keystone-xl.com/about/energy-security/

http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/11/the-keystone-xl-pipeline

Never forget.

As time goes on we need to be more and more aware of our changing climate and overall environment. It is important that in coming years leading nations such as the United States start the ball rolling in slowing these damages to the environment. In June of 2013 President Barack Obama’s administration put together a document called “The President’s Climate Action Plan”, and I will be highlighting some of the main points of that document.

A)   Cutting Carbon Pollution From Power Plants

B)   Building a 21^st Century Transportation Sector

C)   Cutting Energy Waste in Homes, Businesses, and Factories

In the Cutting Carbon Pollution From Power Plants section of the plan the document talks about the problems with waste from our factories. It says that 1/3 of domestic greenhouse gas emissions, namely carbon, come from factories. The general point being made is that other hazardous chemicals such as lead, arsenic, and mercury have very intense regulations on them currently and that carbon emissions should be held to a similar standard.  The document remarks that 35 states have “energy targets” and 25 states have “energy efficiency targets”, while this phrasing sounds hopeful it is still too ambiguous for me to fully understand. A very interesting development in this section is the recognizing of the aging energy grid. The plan calls for a boost of the current energy grid in the US, and if you care to learn more about the problems with the grid, please refer to my first blog post.

In the second part of this plan, they talk about building up a 21^st century transportation sector. They start off by saying that large vehicles are the second biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions. To combat this, the plan outlines that the administration plans on consulting leading figures and stakeholders in the transportation industry to see and plan the next steps. One thing that they mention is attempting to begin using biofuels for military transport. These biofuels appear to be relatively experimental. They never really say exactly what they are or how soon they well be used, but they do say that these biofuels are much less expensive than the current fossil fuels that are used on large vehicles.

Finally, the President plans to cut energy waste in homes, businesses, and factories. This action has already started, with more and more appliances for sale are marketed as being energy efficient. The plan says that they plan to increase the standards for appliances and other machinery in the coming years to keep the ball rolling on their plan to reduce green house gas emissions by 17% in 2020. Additionally the plan calls for less barriers to entry for start up companies desiring to deliver clean energy to homes and businesses. They plan on doing this through being more open to giving government grants and loans to companies that desire to do this. The plan also mentions a Better Buildings challenge, that attempts to make buildings 20% more efficient by 2020.

Being a resident of Boston for the past three years, I feel that I have covered the city pretty well. I feel that I have hit all of the noteworthy locations in the city, or at least I thought that I had. A few weeks a go as a class we took a trip to the Museum of Science in Boston. The trip served as a very educational and fun experience for me, as I learned a lot about specific scientists as well as different ways to spice up my own experiments.

a cool sculpture in the lobby of the MOS.

As I emerged from the Science Park station on the green line I was skeptical of the day. I was tired, under the weather, cold, and I just wanted the visit to go by quickly. But as soon as I got to the first exhibit I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

The first exhibit that I went to was the “Innovative Engineers” installment. This was a very simple exhibit; it was just a cube with pictures and text on each wall of the cube about a few engineers. The engineers featured were Dean Kamen, Stephanie Kwolek, Helen Greiner, George Carruthers, and Eric Bailey. Among this group one stood out in particular to me, Dean Kamen. In his bio posted on the wall the first thing that was said about him was that he was not the best student growing up, and was relatively clueless about what he wanted to do when he grew up. It did say however that he really enjoyed problem solving as a child, which seems like a pretty important prerequisite for an engineer. Kamen went on to invent the auto-syringe, the segway, as well as a wheelchair that can climb stairs called the iBOT. Kamen’s love for solving problems is clear in this invention, because disabled people obviously have a hard time climbing stairs in their wheelchairs. Additionally, Kamen invented a water transportation system that uses a stirling engine; a system that can be learned about in my stirling engine blog post. I found this exhibit extremely uplifting, considering Kamen’s lackluster feelings about school as a child, which is something that I felt as well. The exhibit made me feel as though anyone is capable of doing something to help people out, even me.

The Dean Kamen exhibit in Innovative Engineers

Sign explaining incandescent bulbs in Conserve @ Home

From the Innovative Engineers exhibit I moved upstairs to the Conserve @ Home exhibit. This is en exhibit geared towards children to communicate to them the amount of energy that they use in a day. One specific part of this exhibit really spoke to me. The concept was simple: there was a glass case containing three different types of light bulbs, LED, CFL, and incandescent, and three steering wheels on the outside of the case. The idea is for a child to come up and turn the wheel and try to make its respective light bulb light up. Through this they would learn that it takes the most amount of energy to power the incandescent bulb and the two other bulbs were pretty easy to power and then make the connection to how they power the lights in their homes and maybe choose to turn off their lights when they are not necessary. Through visiting this exhibit I was exposed to a form of experiment that was fun and very hands on and accessible. I found in high school when I would perform an experiment, I would feel as though this information or the processes of doing the lab exercise was rather arbitrary; I would not need this information after I left the lab and it would not apply to me in my life. However this lab at the museum of science was applicable to our every day lives, and most of all it was simple to do. No one is looking to perform an experiment that is time consuming and hard, that sort of defeats the purpose.  This is something that we should add to our final lab demonstration.

It is very important to keep facilities like the Museum of Science alive in this country. I do not consider myself a science enthusiast or even someone who spends a lot of time thinking about science, but the Museum of Science showed me that I am capable of doing scientific activities and applying those to my every day life.

Something that we have been talking a lot about in class recently is the use of nuclear power. The overall opinion of nuclear power and nuclear power plants is negative in the United States. Recently, I watched the 2013 documentary Pandora’s Promise by director Robert Stone. Not only does the documentary exhibit excellent cinematographic, sound, and editorial components, but also it does a great job of debunking some properties of nuclear power that are commonly thought of by Americans. In this blog post I will talk about some of the points that I found to be most interesting.

Many of the interview subjects in the film were former nuclear doubters or protesters, one of them being writer Gwyneth Cravens. Cravens remarked early in the film of the origins of her nuclear fears, saying that the accident at 3 Mile Island made her fearful that radioactive particles could travel all the way to New York City and harm her daughter. She also remarked that at this time she also “conflated nuclear power with nuclear energy”. This was a shared feeling among the other featured people in the documentary, many changing their mind after conversing with “pioneers in the [nuclear power] industry”.

Later in the documentary, they touch on the issue of media coverage on the threat of radioactive particles in our atmosphere. To preface this part in the documentary, they remark that nuclear power is the second safest form of energy after wind power. Cravens also tells us how there has not been one death in the United States caused by a nuclear reactor, and that there is such thing as natural radiation. They go on to talk about how the media often talks about microsieverts or millisieverts and how most people watching the news do not understand what that means and can often confuse things for viewers. They then showed a sequence of a microsievert reader it different parts of the world, showing a pretty constant level of 0.13 per hour. They then travel to a beach in Brazil after explaining that these levels of background radiation are higher at higher altitudes, and they put the reader on the ground and it reads 30.81 microsieverts per hour. They even show an older man burying himself in the sand and says that it helps him with his body pains. They go on to say that this has nothing to do with the rising level of cancer in the world, because most of the radiation from microsieverts is natural.

measure of the background radiation in LA.

Earlier in the documentary, they talk about our energy consumption. It has been told to us that something needs to be done about our energy consumption as a nation, which would dramatically help the state of the environment. However, Michael Shellenberger tells us that in reality, the amount of energy consumption on the planet will only increase as more and more nations begin to develop, speculating that it will be doubled by 2050. He said that instead of focusing our complete energy on less consumption, we should put some time, money, and effort into creating more energy grids that can keep up with our levels of consumption. But also we need to create stabilization we do need to create better infrastructure for our renewable energy resources. I found this argument interesting because it’s something that is not often said.

Before viewing this documentary I was unsure of the safety of nuclear power. I was sure that nuclear power was not something that we should invest in and could potentially kill us. However, after watching the documentary it became clear that nuclear energy is not only more efficient, but it is also one of the safest forms of energy.  I would watch this doc again and suggest it to other people. Very well done.

A few weeks ago our class took a trip to Cambridge, MA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s nuclear reactor. Prior to visiting the reactor, the processes of nuclear fission and fusion were covered in class, making the experience at the reactor much more informed.  Unfortunately, there will not be any of my own photos to accompany my writing in this blog post, considering that we were not allowed to bring our phones into the reactor. The visit was interesting and informative and the tour guide knew a great deal about the facility.

It was apparent to me right as we walked in that this facility had a great deal of safety precautions. Before we passed through the heavy blue doors and into the facility, our names needed to be checked off on a list to make sure that they had all of our personal and contact information in case of an emergency. Additionally before we entered we were asked to wear these metal cylinders, almost like a thick metal pen, on our pants. This instrument, though the name slips my mind, was given to us as a safety measure, to see if we came into any radiation during the tour. This safety measure calmed my ever so slight nerves of getting radiation poisoning, as I feared that there be someone just constantly telling us, “ehhhh you’ll be fine” on our tour. As the tour went on, some of my other light concerns were alleviated.

It was also revealed to us some of the safety precautions within the actual reactor. As we passed through the blue doors, we were taken to some control areas with equipment and some info graphics hanging on the walls to show what the reactor actually does. Then we were lead through a giant blue door that lead into a small confining hallway. This chamber that we were in for about 3 minutes was to drop the pressure of the area. The tour guide explained to us that the pressure within the reactor is always a little bit below atmospheric pressure. This is to ensure that there are hardly any fumes or anything from within the reactor leaks out of the facility into the atmosphere. Also they mentioned that the lower pressure within the reactor would help in the case of some emergencies.

We were then brought below the reactor itself, and into the basement. Here, it was explained to us that MIT used to conduct some medical research on cancer patients. They explained that they treated a few brain cancer patients using Neutron Capture Therapy. In this process the patient would lay down below the reactor and Boron neutrons would be shot directly into the cancerous area of their brain. The chamber in which they would have the patients lay was dark and dormant when we saw it, as much of that research has not been done in a long time because Neutron Capture Therapy has been shown to be only as successful as most chemotherapy.

Having a limited background and understanding of the functioning of a nuclear reactor or the nuclear industry at all, visiting the MIT nuclear reactor was an informative experience

Though we learned about the processes of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion in class, after going on our class trip to the MIT nuclear reactor I did some research on their website to get some more information. What I found was interesting, informative, and helped me understand some of what the nuclear reactor does as well as its history.

Despite all of the buzz around using nuclear reactors for energy, the MIT nuclear reactor is for research only and the second largest university nuclear reactor in the country. In the history section of their website they say, “the NRL has supported educational training and cutting-edge research in areas of nuclear fission engineering, material science radiation effects in biology and medicine, neutron physics, geochemistry, and environmental studies”. It is clear through this description that the main purpose of the reactor is to teach and conduct research.

Additionally I learned that in 1999 the staff at the reactor applied for a relicensing that would upgrade the wattage at the nuclear reactor from 5 MW to 6MW. In 2010 their request was granted and they say that it increased their “neutron flux by 20%” and will help their students in conducting research.

a look inside…

An ever so slight concern of mine before visiting the reactor was my safety. Due to the recent disaster in Japan as well as researching disasters in the past, I know how dangerous nuclear radiation can be. However, in all of the cases that I have researched in the past, all of those facilities are for-profit and are power creators. In MIT’s case, they are a research and education facility only. Although that does not make the facility accident ammune, I felt more at ease knowing that there was no corporate boss at the MIT facility trying to push the equipment to its limits in order to make an extra buck. Through the website I learned that, “The MITR operates at atmospheric pressure and at a low temperature. The low power level means that the MITR has far less radioactivity in its core than does a power plant. The low pressure and low temperature mean that there is no driving force to push out what radioactivity there is in the unlikely event of an accident”.

References

http://web.mit.edu/nrl/www/index.html