Pandora’s Promise starts with environmentally involved people talking about whether they are pro- nuclear or not. The film focuses in what are the pros and cons of the use of nuclear energy to light up cities all around the world.

As the movie begins, they showed us how people started to think about the using of nuclear power further than for weapons. It shows how  the perception of people all around the world was ,regarding this topic, which in its majority was negative. Most people when were asked about the nuclear activity had a negative response because the first thing they thought about it was bombs, weapons and lethal contamination. Even though nuclear power is known for been used for weapons it is not its only purpose. As the film goes on, we could see other purpose of it such as electricity. The positive side on creating electricity from nuclear power is that it uses fewer raw products for more energy. Comparing it with oil, if you release all the energy, one pound of uranium has it would be equal to 500 barrels of oil. Also, as they explained, the waste that nuclear plants leaves is less than the waste of both oil and coal.

 

All along Pandora’s Promise, we saw how people who were against the nuclear power actually start to change their minds. They talk about how some propaganda against nuclear power was made by oil companies to keep in business.

 

Chernobyl and Fukushima are the biggest and most famous nuclear disasters ever. People against nuclear power focus on these catastrophes to talk others into changing their minds about it but as the movie keeps going, they show us what the nuclear level of some cities around the world are. The unit for this measure is Microsieverts per hour. Here are some of the cities

 

Los Angeles: 0.09 Microsieverts per hour.

New York: 0.13 Microsieverts per hour.

Rio de Janeiro: 0.25 Microsieverts per hour.

New Hampshire: 0.30 Microsieverts per hour.

Over Pacific Ocean: 2.20 Microsieverts per hour.

Guarapari(Brazil): 30.84 Microsieverts per hour.

Chernobyl: 0.92 Microsieverts per hour.

 

What experts found out was that the nuclear level increases with altitude and that there’s no correlation with the background radioactivity. As a matter of fact, by the spring of 1986 people started to move in Chernobyl again, and they still live there. That people haven’t suffered from cancer or any other illness radioactive related. Also, many organizations confirm that there were less than 60 deaths caused by that radioactive disaster. This statement contradicts people who said that there were thousands of deaths. When those people were asked about this they had no response about it, they claim that it is all a big lie.

Moreover, a great example is France. A country that is almost completely green uses nuclear energy as electricity in a big part of the nation.

In the movie, we also were able to see that some of the nuclear waste can be and is being used to create fuel.

The final conclusion is that nuclear power can be the future for creating energy ,as electricity, without contaminating the environment.

Here are some pictures of Chernobyl:

Chernobyl’s nuclear plant:

 

Images from:

http://sites.lafayette.edu/egrs352-sp14-nuclear/files/2014/05/nuclearpowerpic.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01876/19861001-aerial_1876307i.jpg

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Slideshows/_production/ss-110421-chernobyl/ss-110425-chernobyl-004.jpg

This week Tom Wales visited us. He had a big box that seemed to have something pretty interesting inside of it. It was a Tesla coil. Before Tom explained to us what that was, he talked about wireless systems and Bluetooth. He actually gave us a pretty interesting tip. When you are using a remote control and don’t know if it is working or not, you just have to take a picture of the front of it and if you see the signal, then it is working. This is because remote controls work with infrared, something that cannot be seen by the human eye, but it can be seen through a phone’s camera.

 

Getting back to the Tesla coil, it is an electrical resonant transformer circuit. As he explained to us, the dream of Nikola Tesla was to have a system that didn’t need wires.  The Tesla oil is actually really surprising because it was invented around 1891 and it can give electricity to a light bulb without touching it.

 

Here’s a picture of Tom showing us how the Tesla coil works.

In the picture, we can see Tom holding two light bulbs; those light bulbs wouldn’t work if they weren’t close to the coil.

 

Another interesting thing that Tom showed us was a light bulb that when it was close to the coil would light up but with two colors. One half of the light bulb would light on blue color, and the other one half would light up red.

 

After Tom’s showed that to us, I was a bit curious about how Tesla coils work, so I looked it up. It works with electromagnetic induction, where its magnetic fields create electric potential, which allows current to flows in light bulbs near it.

 

Here’s a picture of how it works.

 

Although Tom’s visit was short, I found really interesting (as a future electrical engineer and student) all the things he taught us. I’m looking forward to his next visit and can’t imagine what would he show us if he comes again.

 

If you would like to know more about Tesla coils, here is a link for it:

 

http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2014/01/29/how_tesla_coils_work_108474.html