Month: November 2015

The Keystone Pipeline is an existing oil pipeline system in Canada and the United States. The existing pipeline starts in Alberta, Canada and ends in Cushing, Oklahoma. The Keystone XL Pipeline is an expansion proposal, that proposes two expansions. The first expansion would be to connect Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast of Texas, and the second would be a new section from Alberta to Kansas. The Southern part of the project which connects Oklahoma and Texas has already been built. Now the main focus is for the Canadian company to get the approval and permits from the United States government to build the other part. There has been a lot of controversy about whether the expansion of the pipe should be allowed. Even when searching for information it was very difficult to find websites that would just explain what the Keystone XL Pipeline is, most websites showed how bad or how good the pipeline would be. The official website of the project states that the project “will also support the significant growth of crude oil production in the U.S.” Environmentalists and many home owners are against the building of this pipeline.

 

Pros: 

1. TransCanada (the company) predicts that this project will create about 20,000 new jobs in the United States. There are also reports that have estimated up to 500,000 jobs being created with the building of this addition.

2. It  may increase energy security of the Golf Coast. Getting the oil from Canada would be secure because the United States can rely on Canada. Canada is a stable country, friendly neighbors with the United States, and an ally.

3. One benefit that the company states on their website is that all of the taxes they would be paying to build the XL Pipeline would be of great benefit to the American economy. They believe that the taxes they are paying will help build infrastructure in the United States, such as roads and schools. The company estimates a total of 100 million dollars in revenue for cities and counties because of them.

4. It is safer than other methods that can be used to transport the oil. For example, transporting by rail which is known to be a lot more hazardous than through the pipeline.

 

Cons:

1. People have concerns about leaks in the pipeline. Tar sands which are found in Canadian deposits are very harmful for the environment according to critics. Concerns about leaks and past leaks that have occurred are a reason why people do not want this pipeline. The potential leak would cause damages to the environment.

2. It will contribute to global warming. The emissions from the Keystone XL would be equal to adding more than 5.6 million new cars to the U.S roads. People argue that instead of investing money into this it would be better for the longterm to invest in a program that is more environmentally friendly.

3. It is also argued that those jobs created would not be longterm but in fact most of them would be short term; for construction.

 

 

 

https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/tag/keystone-xl-pipeline/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/us/politics/what-does-the-proposed-keystone-xl-pipeline-entail.html?_r=0

http://keystone-xl.com/about/the-keystone-xl-oil-pipeline-project/

http://keystone-xl.com/five-reasons-why-keystone-xl-benefits-the-u-s/

http://heavy.com/news/2014/11/keystone-xl-pipeline-facts-map-news-senate-house/

 

When brainstorming with my group we first tried to think of any ideas that we might have. We could not really think of anything creative or interesting to do. Our next step was to try the internet, we proceeded to googling “cool science projects” and found some websites that had lists of ideas. After looking through many websites we decided on three interesting ideas that we would like to explore further. The ideas were

1. Making energy from potatoes

2. Using rubber bands to make energy

3. Using a wind turbine to make energy

Next we looked up videos of all of these ideas on youtube to get an idea of how much work it would take to build each project and how it would work. We decided that both making energy from potatoes and rubber bands was too easy and we felt as if we did not have to put much effort into both of those projects. We had to just get a potato/rubber bands and some cords and nothing else. Because of this we decided to go with option number three, and make energy using a wind turbine.

 

Since this is an important project we did not want to just make one wind turbine and see how much energy it would make, because again we felt that taking that approach would not take much effort from our part. So we decided to make three different kinds of blades for the wind turbine and to compare them to one another. Our ultimate goal is to see what kind of blade (different shapes) will produce the largest amount of energy when keeping everything else constant. We will have the air (a fan) and the duration of measuring energy constant throughout all three trials. The only variable in the trials will be the different blades that we will switch on the wind turbine.

 

During this meeting we set up times that we are able to meet outside of class to work on the project. We also divided our jobs in order to be more efficient with the project. One member will build the turbine and the different blades, another will write the final blog, and the third will create the powerpoint and the handout for the class. We felt that dividing the jobs up will allow us all to have an equal opportunity to contribute to the project. This meeting was productive and I think that we were able to set the basis for our project.

The movie starts off with many scientists that are pronuclear.  Some of these scientists are in a sense scared to publicly claim that they are pronuclear because they do not want their career to get ruined if anything happens with nuclear plants that proves them wrong. As the Fukushima Daichi incident happened some said they were worried about the decision they made to be pronuclear and whether they were right or not.

A main theme is that the first time nuclear was introduced was through nuclear bombs, and this is a reason why people have a bad perception. One of the scientists even mentioned how he would have dreams as a kid that his whole town was getting bombed and he was the only one living. Previous generations were raised thinking that nuclear power was directly linked to nuclear weapons. People who changed their perception on nuclear power, did so by listening to expertise explanation. One person says he had experts who actually were creators of nuclear power explain the concept to him multiple times for him to become pronuclear and actually understand the process.

Important people (such as actors and singers) who were not informed about nuclear energy would go out infant of people and make speeches about how bad nuclear energy is. Of course regular people listen to what the famous people who get publicity and media say and believe it. There were even ads in papers that were published to scare people and push them to rally. These ads were actually sponsored by the oil companies who did not want to lose their business to nuclear energy, but people would not pay attention to it. A plant that would have been of great advantage to New York would have existed today if people were not so scared of what would happen.

It is very interesting to see this movie and reflect on how much importance media has had and continues to have on our life. Throughout the movie one can see that uninformed media personnel are the reason why regular people have such a horrible perception about nuclear radiation. In news stories for example they always mention numbers about radiation, but when thinking about it the regular people that have never studied radiation have absolutely no idea what those numbers even mean. The media publishes things in a way to look as if they are horrible, but essentially people do not even know what good and bad are when looking at radiation. Different places around the world have different natural levels of radiations. At a beach in Brazil for example the natural radiation is 30.

Being anti nuclear means that you are in favor of burning fossil fuels, worldwide 3 million people die because of fossil fuel emissions. If you ask people around no one knows the damages that coal has on people. Nuclear does not produce carbon dioxide, and this is why the scientists in this movie thought that it would be the only solution. One scientists talks about how nuclear is the second safest way of energy after wind. In all the history of commercial nuclear power plants not one death has occurred due to the plant. It is interesting that a scientist mentions that eating one banana gives a person more radiation then drinking all of the water that comes out of a nuclear plant during one day of running.

Chernobyl is an incident that is also mentioned in the movie. Again the actual facts that occurred and what people were told were compared. What the worlds top public health specialists say and what the public believes is on complete different ends of the spectrum. The public thinks that over 1 million people have died because of Chernobyl while the United Nations has published that less than 50 people have died. People went out on rallies complaining about how Chernobyl killed so many and gave cancer to so many more, in fact they were talking and had no idea what they were talking about. Nuclear energy is not even an issue that an educated environmentalist thinks about.

The explanation of how the nuclear power plants are put together and the safety features that need to be taken into consideration are similar to those that were explained to us at the MIT nuclear reactor. Similarly one scientist states that all major nuclear accidents occur because of cooling issues.

Because people do not have the background context and the basic understanding of what radiation actually is they are terrified. Scientists have no way to communicate to the public what is safe for them, and even if they do people will not believe them. People will not trust scientists anymore because they think that they lie to cover up political schemes.

The ultimate argument in the film is that if people were more knowledgable about nuclear power and how it works, they would have a different perception. Nuclear Energy is not the same as a nuclear bomb, but people do not know that. Even though nuclear was first introduced in a form to blow up a city today it is a form to light up a city. The film promotes nuclear energy as most of the scientists that speak are pro-nuclear. I found the film interesting because I also thought of nuclear energy as very dangerous because I always automatically connected it to nuclear weapons.

 When visiting the MIT Nuclear Reactor laboratory on Friday November 6th we got a tour of the lab and also a lecture from one of the scientists. The presenter focused on speaking about the main differences that the MIT Nuclear Reactor and a reactor that is working to create energy for electricity have. Another main focus of his presentation was the fact that the first priority for this laboratory is safety. According to the presenter, this nuclear reactor exists for the sole purpose of research for both scientific and medical research.

The core of the nuclear reactor at MIT is made up of 27 positions most of which are always filled with fuel. Two to four of these spaces are typically holding an in-core experiment or filled with solid aluminum. There are six blades positioned outside on the core that are there to stop the reactor in less than half a second if there ever is need to. These six blades are connected to a magnet that will automatically drop them. The presenter mentioned that they do regular maintinance on these blades and switch them out often, but incidents have occurred where the machine has shut down because one of the blades fell due to material damage. 

The nuclear reactor

The nuclear reactor is kept very protected through concrete walls. There is also a water system that cools down the reactor. The heat that is created from the reactor is released as pure water vapor and nothing more. There was constant monitoring of the nuclear reactor. A control room was also present, with a lot of technology to monitor every part of the core, the blades, and all parts of the lab . Someone was present at this control room 24/7 making sure none of the numbers being monitored changed in a way that would be harmful. There were monitors to measure radiation at every part of the lab and every person that went into the lab was required to keep a monitor on them to measure how much radiation they are exposed to. There was a crank in the lab that was able to grab any experiment and move it to any part of the building. For example, it could grab one of the experiments that was in the in-core and put it in a machine that had a special glass for a scientist to look through it to evaluate the outcome. This way the scientist would not be exposed to the radiation they otherwise would have been exposed to.

 

The control room

Overall, this was a very informative trip. It was interesting to see all of the intense work put into the lab and all of the safety precautions that the crew had to obey. It is a good facility to exist because it allows people in our area to have the opportunity to test their experiments in the reactor..

 

 

 

The purpose of this experiment was to understand A. the relationship between light intensity (how close we held the flashlight) and voltage output and B. the relationship between the wavelength of light (different colors) and the voltage output of the cell. We used a program to measure the voltage for about 30 seconds and we averaged those results for each round.

First, we compared the effect of the distance of the flashlight to the voltage output. The first measurement we did was holding the flashlight right on the solar cell (0 CM distance) where we got the highest voltage output. Next we continued to measure the voltage by holding the flashlight 2 centimeters further from the solar cell each experiment.

With these results we were able to confirm that the higher the intensity (the closer we held the flashlight) the higher the voltage output. As intensity was lowered so was the voltage output.

Next, we compared the effect of having different wavelengths; by putting different colored film filters on the solar cell and holding the flashlight directly on it (with 0 cm distance). Again, we held the flashlight on each different film for about 30 seconds where the program calculated results and we used the average for each color to compare.

With these results we noticed that the pink color filter was the one that resulted in the highest voltage. The next highest voltage was the blue. I am surprised that pink is the highest and red is the lowest, since the two colors are so similar. I would expect these two colors to be close in the amount of voltage output.